Using Splenda Can Cause Painful Side Effects

So many people are using Splenda as a sugar substitute, and I joined in on that bandwagon as well. I purchased a large bag of Splenda instead of sugar and promptly began to use it as I would use sugar. It was great. It tasted just as sweet as sugar but without the calories. I could use it in my coffee, in baking, in my tea, whatever I wanted. There are cookbooks filled with recipes specifically for using Splenda instead of sugar, so it had to be safe, right? Everywhere I went there was Splenda. Then the pain started.

Living in the New Orleans area during Mardi Gras season means there will be parades. My daughter is on the dance team in high school and her school participated in three parades. As her mother, I walked with her. The distance of the parades was five miles. At the end of the first parade, I had hip joint pain. I had never had hip joint pain before. Walking in the other two parades meant the hip pain would continue. I thought once parade season ended and I would have time to recover from walking so long and the pain would simply go away. It did not.

I found that while relaxing on the sofa in the evening, I would have to change positions frequently. Getting out of the car took effort and I would have to stand up slowly and stretch out my hip. I was walking hunched over and wobbling all the time. I felt as though there was a hip replacement in my future, and I am only 43 years old.

Then one day, I went to the drugstore to pick up a prescription for my husband and was glancing through a book on the Christian book rack entitled Eat This and Live by Don Colbert, MD. In his book, Dr. Colbert listed joint pain as a side effect of using Splenda. Joint pain. That got my attention. By this time, we had gone through the whole bag of Splenda and I had not yet replaced it. Well, I begin thinking about when my pain started, it was around February which is Mardi Gras season. About a month after the Splenda was gone and we were back to using sugar, my pain disappeared. Was this a coincidence? I did not want to find out. I was just happy to not be in pain anymore.

A month later, I went to my dad's house and had a cup of coffee only to find out they had Splenda in the sugar jar, not sugar. The next day the hip pain was back and lasted approximately three days. I was convinced. Never again would I eat Splenda. It is just not worth it.