Those who know me well are used to seeing me with a diet soda, instead of a beer, in hand at parties and social gatherings, and diet soda has long been used as my afternoon pick-me-up and the source of my Friday afternoon happy hour buzz.

It has been a goal of mine for quite some time to kick the diet soda habit, and after several short-lived attempts, I decided to go public with this goal; my thinking was that the punishment I would get socially if caught with a diet soda after this article would be the incentive I needed. However, upon researching diet sodas, or more specifically aspartame, the information itself was enough to convince me to quit - it has now been over two weeks since I've ingested aspartame.

Researching this topic provided me with such an overwhelming amount of material that I have decided to devote two articles to the topic. Read on as I scratch the surface of the information available on the dangers of aspartame, and join me for the next column to learn why diet drinks will never be better than water for weight loss.

Did you know that aspartame was discovered accidentally in 1969 by James Schlatter, a chemist for the US drug company, Searle. He was testing a new chemical as a possible anti-ulcer drug and inadvertently discovered that the compound he was testing was 200 times sweeter than sugar.

Aspartame seemed like a dream come true, as it contained virtually no calories and tasted more like sugar than other sweeteners available; this was ideal for the growing diet market.

Aspartame can now be found in thousands of products, from diet drinks and sugarless gum to spring water, beer, yogurt, candies and even some vitamins and over-the-counter medicines, and sales are worth more than $1 billion a year.

Dr. Hyman Roberts of the Palm Beach Institute for Medical Research in Florida welcomed aspartame and readily recommended it to diabetic patients, as it has no sugar, calories, cholesterol or sodium. He then became aware that more of his patients were suffering with problems such as chronic headaches, impaired vision and panic attacks, and gradually narrowed it down to aspartame.

Here's something interesting that I read in the course of my research that you probably didn't know: The FDA refused to approve aspartame for over eight years because of the seizures and brain tumours this drug produced in lab animals. In their investigation, apparently the FDA 1975 Task Force reviewed a study done for Searle in 1969 by Dr. Harry Waisman, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin.

The study involved feeding aspartame mixed with milk to seven infant monkeys. After 300 days, five monkeys had gran mal seizures and one died.

Aspartame is now on the market anyway, and you can come to your own conclusions on why.

Lucy Johnson reports, in an article written for the Sunday Express of London, UK: "Aspartame has been used for 18 years but no study has properly analysed the effects of long-term exposure. An analysis of studies in America until 1996 found that 92% of independent research papers expressed concern that aspartame may be linked to illnesses such as brain tumours, blindness and seizures."

Most of the studies that declare aspartame safe are funded by the food industry.

There is a lot of research information available, as well as countless stories of people's own experiences with aspartame use, and if you are interested in reading more, check out web sites like the one mentioned above as well as www.dorway.com and www.holisticmed.com.

I have read a lot of disturbing information and case studies, but the things that had the most impact were the lists of reactions and symptoms on www.dorway.com; the list of reactions below is an abbreviated version of the over 60 on the original list:

Reactions linked to aspartame:

Abdominal Pain

Anxiety attacks

Asthmatic reactions

Blood sugar control problems

Burning eyes or throat

Chronic Fatigue

Confusion

Depression

Diarrhoea

Hair loss or thinning

Headaches

Hearing Loss

Insomnia

Joint pains

Memory loss

Nausea

Seizures and convulsions

Sexual dysfunction

Vision loss

Weight gain

Aspartame mimics symptoms or worsens the following diseases:

Fibromyalgia

Arthritis

Multiple Sclerosis

Parkinson's Disease

Lupus

Multiple Chemical Sensitivities

Diabetes and Diabetic Complications

Epilepsy

Alzheimer's Disease

Birth Defects

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Lymphoma

Lyme Disease

Attention Deficit Disorder

Panic Disorder

Depression and other Psychological Disorders.

Now how do you feel about using aspartame? I, for one, have no desire to struggle with the symptoms of any of these diseases because of an addiction to diet soda!

There have been a few brief moments over the past couple of weeks when I have craved a diet soda, but consuming one is just no longer an option for me, and I will be paying far more attention to the ingredients of the other products that I use. For me, staying aspartame free has become part of the formula for becoming BodyWise.