Splenda
 

I just wanted to post my own experiences with Splenda. Hope this is the right place. I started using Splenda in my coffee about 2 years ago. About a year later, I began experiencing numb arms and legs at night. About 6 months after that, I started having awful vertigo where I would feel like I was falling or spinning around or telescoping inward (hard to describe that one) when I was actually stationery. I have Graves disease, so I thought it might be related, but my thyroid tests were normal. My doctor sent me to 2 different cardiologists, a neurologist, and an endocrinologist. No one found anything. They ordered brain and neck MRIs because they wanted to rule out multiple sclerosis. That was pretty scary and took some months of waiting until I could get the MRI. It wasn't that, thank God.

With no answers but lots of medical bills, the symptoms continued. One day last spring, in addition to my usual 3 cups of coffee with splenda, I made cinnamon toast with splenda instead of sugar. I had a massive vertigo episode about 15 minutes later. I wondered about the connection at the time but didn't make it thoroughly. About 3 days later, I had the same cinnamon toast and experienced the same vertigo. Finally, I made the connection. I started looking up Splenda health problems on the internet and found that I was by no means alone. This sort of surprised me because it's made from sugar, right? But how is it processed?

I threw away the Splenda. It took about 2 weeks for the vertigo to go away and another month for the numbness to go away, but I haven't had them since--unless I accidentally consume something with Splenda.

I don't know if this is dangerous for everyone or if some people are just sensitive to it. The symptoms I found that others were having including fibromyalgia-type symptoms, brain fog, and the symptoms I had as well.

I'm not sure what the best solution for everyone else is, but I'm never touching the stuff again. I hope this helps somebody.

Very helpful indeed!! So sorry you went through this, but hopefully your discoveries will help others!!

I've run across a lot of folks with reactions to gluten like that. It is always good to track down sensitivities to food.

Fortunately there are tons of other non-caloric sweeteners. Right now I'm using Truvia, erythritol, stevia and xylitol. They're all plant based, or made by fermenting plants. All of them, except stevia, are found naturally in fruits, veggies or tree bark.

I'm using stevia now too. Even though I like licorice, I don't really like the licorice flavor in my coffee, though, but it seems the best option for me right now. I'm not familiar with the others you mentioned. Do you find advantages to the other sweeteners?

They all have advantages and disadvantages. Truvia has an sort of vanilla scent/flavor to it. Erythritol has a "cooling effect" in your mouth, like you've eaten something minty. Xylitol is a sugar alcohol that can give you gas or diarrhea if you eat too much of it.

Combining more than one has the effect of canceling out some of the bad qualities of the other and also making it sweeter. It's the synergistic effect of combining sweeteners. You have to be careful when you're cooking with them that you don't over sweeten things when you combine them.

I was thinking about the possibility of getting a couple different kinds and going back and forth. That way, since based on Splenda I seem to be sensitive to these things, perhaps by reducing the amount of any one that I use, I would reduce the potential problems that go with it. I like your idea of combining them, but I'm probably not going to be baking with them--just using them in coffee.

Sweeteners are very subjective so I'd recommend trying alternative brands of any kind of sweetener. I wasn't happy with stevia until I tried Nunaturals brand after I saw it recommended so often. I also like Sweetleaf Liquid Stevia, which comes in flavors although the flavors are not strong.

One I don't see mentioned too often is lo han or Luo Han Guo from Chinese monk fruit. Trimedica is the brand I have tried and liked. Swanson has one out now too that includes inulin. Jarrow combines theirs with xylitol. You can find them at Amazon and iHerb or Swanson. Nunaturals has a lo han liquid extract too. I had no idea how much to use of that so I contacted the company and they just replied that 10 drops is equal to 1 tsp sugar.

Lakanto is another new one that combines erythritol with lo han. Sold by Amazon or here: http://www.sarayahealth.com/faq.html

There's also Just Like Sugar which is chicory root, calcium, vitamin C and natural flavor, orange peel. Recommended by Maria Emmerich on her blog. http://mariahealth.blogspot.com/ I'm going to have to try both of those.

Right now I'm pretty happy with Zsweet http://zsweet.com/htmls/faq/zsweet-ingredients.html an erythritol and stevia combo that seems to have conquered the usual erythritol cooling effect.

If you only use a sweetener in coffee, that may narrow down which one you'll like best as many people are trying to bake with them as well as other uses.

Wow! What a plethora of knowledge. I'm going to be hanging onto all these options. Thanks a bunch.

I've tried so many, but xylitol seems to be my ultimate fav, for the taste it's the best and it doesn'tleave after taste, as well it's 100% natural and it's good for your teeth, as it fights tooth decay and stabilises insulin and hormone levels and promotes good health. But overly consumed it has laxative effect, and has 4 garbs per tea spoon, although you can half the amount to what you normally use. So if you normally have one tea spoon of sugar in your tea/coffe, with xylitol you need only half the amount. And if you limit the cup only once in a morning, then it's ok. anyhow that's what I do.