Parent concerned that Aspartame may induce seizures

I have a three-year-old son named Zachary. He was born a happy healthy baby. In the summer of 2004, I became concerned over the amount of sugar he was getting in his juice. We live in the desert and he needs to drink a lot of fluid. Because of this, I decided to switch him to sugar free drinks at my home as well as my mother’s when she baby-sits.

I purchased crystal light and sugar free tang and began giving him these on a daily basis. I was an avid diet Pepsi drinker and he was getting sips of this as well. In December 2004, while out shopping with my husband Zachary experienced his first seizure. He had not been sick, nor had a fever. He stiffened up, turned blue and was transported by ambulance to the hospital.

He was observed for 24 hours and released. His CAT scan and MRI came back clear. The month of December we started experiencing some very concerning behavior with him. He began collapsing constantly. He would be walking across the floor playing, and just collapse. It became so bad that we had to buy a helmet to avoid a head injury, because he was hitting the floor hard and bruising. I was watching him become more ill as the days went by. I remember going in to his room one night and found him limp in his crib with a blank stare. I knew something was terribly wrong.

I put him in my bed because I was afraid to leave him alone. Eating became a problem. I would watch him pick up a spoonful of food and his hand would lose grip and the food would fall before it would ever made it to his mouth. He now had to be carried around the house because we were afraid he was going to injure himself, his falls were becoming worse. He began having seizures lasting up to five minutes at a time. On December 29th an ambulance was called and he was taken back to the hospital. He was now very ill.

A 24-hour EEG showed he was having 40 plus seizures a day. He was in a status seizure condition and was transferred to ICU where he had to be sedated with three different medications to break the seizures in his brain. It took three days to break his seizures and nine days later he was able to go home. Zachary spent one year on two different types of seizure medications to allow his brain to heal. The MRI and CT scans continued to come back normal.

There was no medical reason for these seizures. When we got home from the hospital I was going over everything that could have possibly caused these seizures. I knew we were missing something. The only thing different in his routine was all the sugar free products he started having in the summer containing aspartame. I began reading for several hours and days on this and discovered that Zachary’s symptoms were identical to those of an aspartame overdose. Everything from his types of seizures, collapsing, and the time frame he became ill.

Because it is metabolized as formaldehyde, aspartame causes your brain to become unbalanced therefore seizures are more likely to occur, especially in children. It can take up to a couple months to make a person critically ill, which also fit his profile. I have been in the medical field for 15 years and firmly believe that he was having aspartame induced seizures, which he could have died from. Zachary has returned to being a healthy three year old.

We will never allow any sugar free products in our house again. I wish more parents were aware of the dangers of this. Certain products like Pedialite, children’s vitamins, cold medicines, and foods like Jello which children love, all contain this horrible ingredient. It is a shame that the FDA still allows all these products on the shelf at the expense of our children. Mine could have died.