Can Drinking Diet Soda With Aspartame Give You Bad Side Effects?

Diet soda is one of the most popular beverages in America. "Beverage Digest" claims the combined total sales of both regular and diet sodas topped over 10 billion cases in 2005. With obesity on the rise, people are looking to diet drinks and foods to help them combat the battle of the bulge. What people don't realize is that many of these products, including diet soda, carry the risk of dangerous side effects.

Nutritional Value

Most sodas offer little to no nutritional value. Diet sodas are no different. They have few calories or none at all, but this is offset by the amount of sodium they contain. Diet sodas contain artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, splenda and sucralose. Aspartame does contain the amino acid phenylalanine, but offers little nutritional benefit without the rest of the chain of amino acids that it belongs to.

They contain minimal carbohydrates and no protein or fats. Unless soda has antioxidants or fruit juice added to it, they are devoid of any substantial nutritional value.

Headaches

Aspartame is an excitotoxin. This means that it is a toxic substance that damages cells by stimulating them to the point of death, according to the book "Excitotoxins" by Russell Blaylock, M.D. As the level of aspartame rises in the brain, the stimulatory effect it has on cells cause moderate to severe headache pain. This debilitating effect on the brain can also lead to migraines, panic attacks and issues involving the central nervous system. Migraines and headaches decrease in severity and eventually subside when consumption of the diet soda and aspartame is discontinued.

Neurological Issues

Symptoms similar to that of multiple sclerosis have been reported by people who consume large amounts of diet soda and other products that contain aspartame, according to Women to Women. Aspartame causes formaldehyde buildup within the brain. These toxins damage the central nervous system and lowers your body's immunities. Fibromyalgia, lupus and a myriad of other central nervous system disorders are being connected to aspartame poisoning. The FDA has acknowledged the link between aspartame consumption and rising formaldehyde levels in the brain, but feels the minimal amounts being found are not enough to do any damage.

Weight Gain

Some medical professionals believe that ingesting large amounts of aspartame leads to weight gain. This is caused by the body's response to the food it receives. Sweet-tasting foods send the signal to the brain that the body is satisfied. When no sugar or glucose is released into the system, the body resets itself and triggers feelings of hunger, according to Fred and Alice Ottoboni, public health scientists with doctorates in environmental health sciences and comparative biochemistry, respectively.