I was an avid Diet Coke drinker for over 20 years. Everyone kept telling me that Nutrasweet/Phenylalanine was going to kill me or make me go crazy(er). I NEVER had any health issues from NutraSweet. One day, I decided to listen to people (the ONE time in my life!) and kick nutrasweet. After a couple of days of headaches from the withdrawals, I was on the path to being able to use telekinesis, since nutrasweet, according to everyone, was killing my brain.

I substituted it with Splenda because it didn’t have any calories, either, it was made from sugar and tasted good! Within a couple of weeks of using Splenda in everything (I constantly have some liquid to drink), I went to a routine doctor’s appointment to get meds for asthma.

They took my blood pressure and asked if I had ever had a blood pressure problem, to which I said no. It was so high that they were toying with sending me to an E.R. I didn’t think anything of it, and had friends that said, “you’re getting OLD!”. (Even though I am only 17!  🙂  ) The doctor prescribed meds that he stated I would be on the rest of my life. I didn’t like that, but I also didn’t want to have a heart attack.

I tried 3 meds before I found one that lowered the pressure. (Benicar) I took this for several weeks before I started thinking about what could have brought about such a big change in my health. I kept saying “while I was drinking diet coke, I never had a problem!”… Ah-HAH!

So, while sitting with my pulse racing at 120 one day, I looked up “splenda high blood pressure”, and sure enough, there were lots of articles out there with people having the same symptoms. I stopped Splenda immediately and went back to plain old white sugar. After about 3 days, I noticed my pressure going down and I stopped taking the meds on the 4th day, since it was close to normal. Even my heart rate went down!

The good thing is that coming off of splenda wasn’t like coming off of nutrasweet. No withdrawals.

I also have to add in that my asthma is irritated by chlorine. You can taste the chlorine in Splenda. I didn’t have any asthma issues with Splenda, but maybe I am allergic to it and was putting it in my body.

Mind you, I don’t like when people tell me to change my habits and this post is not trying to get you to change yours. But, if you’re using splenda and have high blood pressure, you might want to try changing over for a week or so to regular old white sugar. I am not a doctor, so you should discuss it with yours before trying anything. But remember, if you get well, the doctor loses money. The receptionist loses money. The drugstore loses money. The pharmaceutical companies lose money.

You keep that money. You feel better. Hmm… fair trade, if you ask me!