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This is a purely anecdotal post, without peer-reviewed studies to back anything up, but I think it’s an important enough issue to discuss here anyway.
I’m a 48-year-old woman with joint pain that goes back many years. It comes and goes in many of my joints, but doesn’t usually last more than a few days – a couple of weeks at the most.
My lifestyle isn’t unhealthy, but it could be healthier. I don’t usually drink sodas (soft drinks) or high sugar drinks and I don’t eat a lot of junk – I don’t have the taste for it. But, I also don’t 
exercise as much as I should and I could eat a few more fruits and vegetables throughout the week. I’m also someone who stresses easily, so this isn’t all that healthy either. But, I’m doing ok most of the time.
About three or four weeks ago, I developed joint pain in my left wrist. At first, I didn’t think much of it as it’s not unusual, but it got progressively worse over the next few weeks. I couldn’t bear any weight on it, like I would when getting up from a lying position and off the bed, for example.
Another thing I started doing about five weeks ago, was drinking Diet Coke at least three times a week (something I’d never done before) and chewing gum with aspartame, at least once a day, if not more often (something I’d done rarely). I don’t know why I started drinking the Coke or chewing the gum.
Then, I stopped doing both – the Coke and the gum. Just because I felt like it. And my wrist pain reduced dramatically. It’s still tender from time to time, but it’s nowhere as severe as it was before.
Of course, I can’t prove that it was cause and effect. It could be total coincidence that the wrist pain eased off as I stopped taking in aspartame, but a little bit of research turned up that a lot of people seem to be reporting the same types of reactions. In this piece, MY PAINFUL EXPERIENCE WITH ASPARTAME AND ARTHRITIS by author Richard J. Sabates, M.D., Dr. Sabates reports having severe pain that only went away once he eliminated aspartame from his diet.
A quick search on Google shows many people who connected some sort of pain or discomfort to their consumption of aspartame. Dr. Sabates, in his piece, suggests that the fact that studies about aspartame being a problem are hushed up because of money. That’s definitely an uncomfortable idea – but aspartame is a huge, huge money maker. Could this be true?
I never drank diet drinks before because I didn’t like the aftertaste of the aspartame. I think I tried to get over that because I wanted to drink Coke but I didn’t want all the sugar in it. I didn’t drink it for the caffeine – caffeine doesn’t do anything to me. I just wanted it for the taste. But now, I’m not taking any chances. No more aspartame for me.
Have you ever found something like this or do you think I’m way off base?
~~~
Dear Dr. Garst,
I know you are a physician but I have experienced alot of aches and pains when I am taking in aspartame. I now have an inflammed wrist which I believe is caused from aspartame once again. The mints I have been eating (didn’t know they have aspartame in them) for the past week have made my wrist even more painful. There are way too many experiences from people injesting aspartame to disregard what is being said. Now that I am not eating or drinking ANYTHING with aspartame in it, it will be interesting to see if my inflammed wrist subsides. It’s such a shame to me and upsetting that money is more important than people. It’s because of the tremendous amounts of money being made that this is not being taken off the market. If more people banned together and stopped buying these products then things will change. Unfortunately I do not see this happening.
I ask you without disregard what corporations are paying you?
that’s really interesting as I’m a 46 year old woman and have just had the same type pain in my wrist that you describe. the only thing that I can attribute it to is the Halloween candy I’ve polished off in the past few days (mostly M&Ms). This is so out of the blue and I’m just online trying to figure out what it could be… sugar?
953 days ago
[...] post on October 10, Aspartame Causing My Wrist Pain?, is purely an anecdotal one. I was musing about the appearance of my pain, use of aspartame, and [...]
Thank you John.
I’m afraid that many people won’t see your comments here and they are truly valuable. May I take them and put them as a guest post from you? I really would like people to see what you have to say.
Marijke
Marijke:
Sorry about your wrist pain, but it likely has little direct connection with aspartame. First, aspartame is perfectly safe; it is perhaps the most studied substance in history. There is, however, an internet conspiracy theory attributing 90+ problems to aspartame. But, perhaps with the exception of headaches in susceptible people, this remains a conspiracy theory without real scientific merit. Aspartame is approved for use as a sweetener by all the world’s relevant regulatory authorities. For more see Snopes comments: http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=aspartame&sp-a=00062d45-sp00000000&sp-advanced=1&sp-p=all&sp-w-control=1&sp-w=alike&sp-date-range=-1&sp-x=any&sp-c=100&sp-m=1&sp-s=0. Or read about new discoveries about aspartame safety in my comments to http://blog.rv.net/2009/09/green-tea-a-natural-alternative-to-sugary-sodas/comment-page-1/#comment-85221.
Second, all of the above now said, the reality is that people (1) deficient in the vitamin folic acid (folate), (2) who have unusual folate enzymes called polymorphisms (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylenetetrahydrofolate_reductase, or (3) that have high blood homocysteine (frequently reduced by added folate) may show issues that seem associated with aspartame even to the point of dissipating after aspartame withdrawal, but that are really connected by the above or similar (vitamin) problems. Folate deficiency and high homocysteine are directly linked to rheumatoid arthritis and other immune disorders, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17538801?ordinalpos=8&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum and see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18313425?ordinalpos=6&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum.
Migraine headaches are another problem found in people with the methylenetetra-hydrofolate polymorphisms, even without aspartame exposure, but added folate can overcome this problem.
Methanol from aspartame is metabolized by folate and presence of these three (or related) issues could be exacerbated by the methanol in aspartame. But you must know that no food or drug can be responsible for problems that derive from a preexisting personal problem. While I have no idea whether these types of personal issues may explain your wrist pain, wrist pain can be a symptom of rheumatoid arthritis. And, as noted in the links in the above paragraph, that wrist pain could be suggestive of underlying personal issues as described there. I personally suspect that aspartame sensitivity may have promise as a test for these and other related vitamin issues. But you should know that the underlying issues have known risks of their own; deficiency of the vitamin folic acid is known to be a substantial factor in many neural tube birth defects, likely plays a major role in fetal alcohol syndrome, and is a factor in many cancers, including breast cancer, see abstract http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16162645?ordinalpos=17&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&log$=freejr. I just can’t understand why physicians fail to see the connections between these issues and patients sensitive to aspartame. This folate deficiency-methanol metabolism and toxicity issue has been well known for more than forty years.
Lastly, further evidence that your pain is really not from aspartame, but some underlying personal issue comes from the finding that aspartame itself has benefit against inflammation, for example, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11459435?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum. This action may be associated with other evidence suggesting long term exposure to methanol can foster folate synthesis; such biological feedback would certainly make sense and it could explain the aspartame data too. You can read more about the discovered positive effects of aspartame against inflammation at http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2009/08/tony-e-hugli-phd-ceo-healthaide-inc.html. Note, however, that this post was written to a website that supports this internet conspiracy.
John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)
(FYI, the author has absolutely no financial or biasing connection with the aspartame, the soft drink or their related industries. The author has a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry (Pharmacy) from the University of Iowa, postdoctoral experience at Yale University (Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry) and at Vanderbilt University and taught nutritional toxicology at the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) besides having conducted federally funded research at Vanderbilt, UIUC, and at several other universities before recently entering into retirement.)