Aspartame: Gum, Anyone?

This is going to sound off-topic for a minute, but I promise I have a point: From January, 2008 until April 2008 I lived in Thailand. During that time, I acquired & suffered horrible stomach pains. Unfortunately, the doctors there weren’t too concerned with finding out what was wrong with me; I was given six different coloured pills, told to take them & go home. No thank you…I’d rather feel pain than mix prescription medications (especially when I don’t know what they are).

For the next year & a half, I was a lab rat. Canadian doctors could not find out what was wrong with me, though I went through every *shudder* procedure imaginable. My stomach problems became consistently worse, to the point where I could not eat, & my digestive system was not working. At 5’10” & 110lbs, I was a bone rack & unable to eat.
In August 2009, I visited the emergency room 3 days in a row. I was in tears from frustration, chronic pain, & hunger. On the third day, they finally gave me a shot to stop the spasms in my stomach, & antibiotics for parasites. And that was it!! The pain was GONE instantly!! I had picked up an undetectable parasite from Thailand, & they had to chance it with the antibiotics. For the first time in a year & a half, I felt total relief (& stuffed my scrawny little face for the next few weeks!)
In November 2009, I started to have pains in my tummy again. I started to clean up my diet, focusing a lot on raw foods. However, it continued for months. There were times when I was on the floor, clutching my stomach & crying out in pain. It happened once when I was driving, & I actually couldn’t lift my foot to brake! The horrible pain I suffered caused mood swings, & I became anti-social (soooo not me!!). I isolated myself most of the time, sitting in pain & misery. I was starting to think the parasite had done permanent damage, & was booked in to see my doctor to follow up with more tests.
For how clean my diet was, though, I hated the fact that I still chewed gum. Yep, I’m bad, we all have our vices. Though I never drink diet pops, or eat sugar-free foods because I’m so opposed to aspartame, I somehow thought the amount in gum couldn’t be that bad for me. Well, it was. About a week before my first appointment back with my doctor, I decided to say goodbye to gum, simply because I knew it was bad for me. As soon as I kicked the gum habit, my stomach problems stopped! I talked to my doctor about it, & he told me that aspartame is not absorbed by the body. It sits in your gut & can often irritate the bowel. In my case, my body couldn't digest it at all. I'm allergic to aspartame.
My sister found out about six years ago that she suffers hallucinations & becomes dizzy upon consumption of aspartame. She has avoided diet soda, gum, & all sugar-free products ever since.
Methyl alcohol, found in aspartame, turns into formaldehyde when it enters your body. Formaldehyde is highly carcinogenic. Scientists use it as a preservative in laboratories. Preservative. And yet most people (myself at one point included) ingest it. Gross.
Aspartame has been blamed for more than ninety-two maladies, including mood changes, vomiting, abdominal cramps, diarrhoea, seizures & convulsions, numbness, change in heart rate, ADD, cancer, multiple sclerosis, etc. It was denied approval for human consumption by the FDA for sixteen years!! "Magically," much of the research has disappeared in the years since it was approved. Why? Because government agencies like money more than they care about your health.
I won’t get into the nitty gritty about government, “food,” & dirty money. I will, however, recommend you a groundbreaking book: The China Study, by T. Colin Campbell. I’ll be posting a review of the book in the next couple of weeks. Read it: this book will save your life, if you let it.