Side effects of Aspartame (namely Diet Coke)

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 14:45:32 GMT

I have been a big time Diet Coke drinker for a long long time. I mean, multiple Diet Cokes per day every day for as long as I can remember. Until recently, I have always just brushed off all of the fear-mongering about Aspartame/Nutrasweet as just that...fear. Well, I might be a believer in the making.

Just the other day, I decided to cut way back on the Diet Coke consumption, maybe even stop drinking entirely. As of right now, I have had only one 12oz can in over 48 hrs and I THINK I am feeling the difference already.

A little history on me...In my past I was a powerlifter/lifting enthusiast and have experienced my fair share of joint damage. So, I always just attributed my painful knees to all the heavy squats, my aching elbows to all the curls/bench-pressing, etc. I also am a big eater! And I always just wondered what was so different about me that made me so painfully hungry all the time, when other people seemed to be sated.

Now, I am not gullible enough to think that what I have begun to experience might not just be a "good day" for me, but to state it plainly...I feel different

I feel different enough actually, that today I wondered what the side-effects of Aspartame were. Was there a list of these somewhere that I could use to "compare notes" so to speak?

What I found was pretty enlightening, and has prompted me to call an end to my Diet Coke drinking days.

NOTE: My research into this topic is very cursory, and almost entirely depends on one article I found on the topic (read it here). I think that the way I feel is enough to convince me to stop drinking Diet Coke, even if other research refutes the effects stated in the linked article.)

The reactions to Aspartame as listed in the linked article:

(I bolded ones I experienced personally. I don't know if they are truly related to Aspartame or not, but they are things I experience nonetheless):

Abdominal Pain
Anxiety attacks
arthritis
asthma
Asthmatic Reactions
Bloating, Edema (Fluid Retention)
Blood Sugar Control Problems (Hypoglycemia or Hyperglycemia)
Brain Cancer (Pre-approval studies in animals)
Breathing difficulties
burning eyes or throat
Burning Urination
can't think straight
Chest Pains
chronic cough
Chronic Fatigue
Confusion
Death
Depression
Diarrhea
Dizziness
Excessive Thirst or Hunger
fatigue
feel unreal
flushing of face
Hair Loss (Baldness) or Thinning of Hair
Headaches/Migraines dizziness
Hearing Loss
Heart palpitations
Hives (Urticaria)
Hypertension (High Blood Pressure)
Impotency and Sexual Problems
inability to concentrate
Infection Susceptibility
Insomnia
Irritability
Itching
Joint Pains
laryngitis
"like thinking in a fog"
Marked Personality Changes
Memory loss
Menstrual Problems or Changes
Migraines and Severe Headaches (Trigger or Cause From Chronic Intake)
Muscle spasms
Nausea or Vomiting
Numbness or Tingling of Extremities
Other Allergic-Like Reactions
Panic Attacks
Phobias
poor memory
Rapid Heart Beat
Rashes
Seizures and Convulsions
Slurring of Speech
Swallowing Pain
Tachycardia
Tremors
Tinnitus
Vertigo
Vision Loss
Weight gain

Robots and main page accessibility

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 06:00:00 GMT

On my quest towards e-stardom (aka a relevant and content-rich website), I realized that the navigation towards my older "news items" was somewhat lacking. My solution for this problem was to create a side bar menu that would contain all of the news item titles in descending date order (aka newest first).

A day or two after this change, I began to notice a positive side-effect to including all of these titles as links on the main page...The robots (spiders) were crawling all through my site! I'm not 100% sure, but I can't imagine how this increased indexing would hurt my chances of being returned in some search results.

In a possibly related subject, a Google search for 'Aaron Lynch' now returns this page in the top 10 search results (#6 as of this entry) and an MSN search returns www.AaronJLynch.com as #3!

Does anybody want my autograph?

UPDATE 1/25/06: Either Google has changed my ranking somehow, or my switch to BlogCFC has harmed my accessibility somehow. I now turn up on like page 5 or something terrible. Back to the drawing board!

RSS feed for InstantSpot site Progressive Overload

Side effects of Aspartame (namely Diet Coke)

Robots and main page accessibility