You must be making progress in therapy. I see that you now admit to more than one voice (Gozer in the past). :)

Perhaps you didn't read the beginning of my post - I am a diabetic, and as such, the only thing that I can consume without bringing up my blood sugar is something that is sweetened with a sugar substitute. Fruit juice has lots of sugar. Veggie juice also will bring up my sugar if I drink too much of it. And in my system, too much sugar is poison.

-Z-man.

I skimmed over most of this thread, but here's what I have come to understand about aspertame and a number of other artificial sweetners:

basically, these are fake, chemical, artificial creations that the body isn't used to. Normally, toxins are filtered and stored through the liver; the liver, however, doesn't know how to break down these toxins. So they get stored in fat cells.

Now, it has been proven that SMALL amounts of aspartime are harmless in the human body... but what happens when your fat cells keep storing large amounts over a long period of time? Especially for people who are trying to lose weight (DIET PEPSI/COKE?!?)... the body burns off the fat cells and releases the toxins back into the bloodstream. Cancer city, here you come.

Stay away from aspartame whenever possible.
Aspartame itself is a safe chemical..... however it is very common for it to decompose into formaldehyde. There were a couple studies done on it over the last 10 years that have shown things such as in a can of diet coke fresh from the supermarket shelf, as much as 5% of the aspartame in the drink has decomposed into formaldehyde. Also when being processed by the body this ratio goes up to something like 10%.
We all know formaldehyde causes cancer. So, the studies above are correct and incorrect at the same time.
I wish I could find the references I had for this. My G/F (now wife) and I did a big science project on it since this is a more recent development in the debate over artificial sweeteners. This is why you will see an increasing number of drinks emerging on the market containing splenda (which to date has no serious health affects associated with it) instead of aspartame. Note that a lot of drinks with splenda also contain acesulfame-potassium, another subject of contreversy.
Also worth noting is that aspartame dramatically increases the body's water retention (unless large amounts of water are consumed with it), so if you are drinking diet pops trying to lose weight you might want to rethink it.

My mom has now had 3 sets of fibrous tumors removed from her body. Up until age 42 she was completely free of them. She went on a diet when she was 42. The only change in her lifestyle was going from coke to diet coke. She was consuming 1-2 2L bottles every day. By age 44 she had ~8lbs worth of tumors and they were causing so many health effects that she had to have them removed.
She went off of diet coke for a year with no health problems whatsoever. After that year she disregarded both mine and the doctor's advice and returned to diet coke (because she was gaining weight again). It took less than 6 months for her to have built up 4.5lbs worth of tumors again. She had them removed in a second operation. Now she is about to go under the knife for a third time (again after a return to diet coke) to remove yet another set of tumors. I never said she was smart.
They did extensive blood work on her, and the one thing that has always come back is elevated levels of formaldehyde and it's decomposed byproducts.

Yeah, I used the word "probably", but that wasn't really strong enough. Maybe I should have said one of the most effective. There don't seem to be a lot of options out there.

Mike

I just did a quick "google" to see what may be out there and found info from 2 basic groups. The first was the maker, Monsanto. That is pretty much expected. The second group was made up of what I would define as natural food advocate groups. There were no university or corporate studies referenced.

I am in no way an Aspartame fan, advocate or even user. I am cynical about the way the FDA is manipulated by congress. Aspartame has been a political lightening rod since the 1970's. IMHO if there were credible studies showing it was a danger, I am sure that one or more of our Washington slime balls would be trying to "save his constituents from this grave danger" and we see this issue constantly on the Internet and public news.

After Zero10 post I'm swearing off all artificial sweeteners.
I have got in a VERY bad habit of drinking diet coke in the morning for my caffeine "pick me up" and sometimes drinking decaffeinated diet coke and rum to "relax" after work (very unhealthy I know).

I am going back to coffee if I must have caffeine and red wine in the evenings.

Please don't tell me the cigars are bad for me (I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA LA).

BTW I skipped the rum and diet coke last night and the chronic elbow pain I have had for months isn't bothering me this morning YMMV.

I don't have the time right now to dig through all of this, but here are some quick reads with lots of links.
http://www.health-report.co.uk/aspartame-formaldehyde-poisoning.htm

I wish this one was a little better supported
http://www.dorway.com/badnews.html
One of the important parts...
Basically, if anything with aspartame in it is stored at above 30*C then you can be in trouble...
Sugar free Jello - aspartame, and you add boiling water to it!
diet coke - can often be stored and transported unrefrigerated. In the summer this can frequently result in it being heated well beyond 30*C.

And from an interesting source....
http://home.howstuffworks.com/question536.htm

So basically, aspartame itself is not harmful, only once it begins to break down does it become dangerous.

Ahh, forgot to post some of the last information I wanted to....
Okay, many people complain of getting the *****s from sucralose. This is a very common side effect if over-consumed. Basically here is how it works.
Aspartame - digested by the body, many side effects from this process
Sucralose - 98% undigested by the body, no side effects when digested
Sucralose (IIRC) is a glucose and a fructose molecule with some H atoms having been replaced with Cl atoms. This causes it to register VERY strongly with our taste receptors, but remain almost completely undigestable. Before you argue that chlorine is very dangerous for us, let us remember that many of us drink chlorinated water, and the amounts here are thousands of times lower than even in water. When your body runs into something it cannot digest it will just pass it through.... hence the side effects.
Sucralose isn't perfect, but given the options I feel that it is the best one out there. Unfortunately I am presently on a diet and have had to GREATLY restrict my sugar intake. Hence why I have done so much investigation about artificial sweeteners. The side effects of sucralose can be reduced/eliminated by restricting the quantity of it that you consume. I found that if I used less than 10 packets of it in a day that I would feel just fine. Also over time I have found that I have developed a tolerance to it, and can intake much more of it now than in the past.

I'm not a lab rat so I'm not worried. I recall that recently they determined that the lab rate study was flawed. They had given the rats something like 800x the daily dose. I think you could get cancer from water at 800x the dail dose. :)

Diabetic 3 years, most opf my influx is of a sugar sub. had no problems...

Interesting thread.

My coworker used to put two packets of Equal in his morning capuccino and started to get arthritis pain. He went back to regular sugar and the pain has stopped.

Surprise, surprise.

In general, there is a push by those in-the-know to eat as many natural foods as possible; all these artificial chemicals solve a temporary problem (keeping your junkfood fresh, giving it a sweet taste without the calories, etc.), but the long-term effects are beginning to prove very hazardous.

As I said before, most of these chemicals, taken alone and in isolation, are completely harmless. But when you eat many different ones on a daily basis, and the body begins to store these chemicals (since they are not natural, the human body doesn't know how to dispose of many of them), the body becomes a walking chemical plant.

Our body knows how to break down what is provided it by nature; that's why I'll take a cup of coffee, a glass of wine, or a bottle of beer over a soda any day of the week... of course, with those you still do have to worry about pesticides...

The corn sweeteners (found in everything today) are pretty scary too, and are associated with the rise in diabeties.
Everything in moderation with lots of water and oatmeal.