Diet Soda and Headaches

I’ve been getting headaches lately and blaming sinuses. While I have been having some post-nasal drip, indicating an issue of some kind, I haven’t really thought of it as that much of a problem. Until I started getting headaches, too.

Well, I finally correlated my intake of Diet Coke with the arrival of headaches. I had a particularly bad run of headache from Sunday to Wednesday last week, and realized that I had also consumed a Diet Coke each day, when I don’t usually drink the stuff so often. So I stopped drinking it - though I haven’t changed my coffee and tea consumption at all - and haven’t had a headache in a week.

Anyone else hear of a correlation between Diet soda and detrimental effects like this? Sensitivity to artificial sweeteners, maybe? I never really liked soda very much, I was just lazy lately because the hot pot at work crapped out and I don’t like heating water for tea in the microwave. Weird, I know.

You mentioned that you were drinking diet coke in the place of tea. Could it be that you aren’t ingesting as much caffeine with the soda as you usually do with the tea?

I know for most of us who partake of caffeine on a regular basis, reducing the quantity or quitting altogether will bring on withdrawal headaches.

Just my $.02.

Heck, depending on the tea, it could be the other way around, and was what I was going to suggest.

The one thing I learned (here on the Dope) is that it is almost certainly not the aspartame.

Caffeine variation would be my vote too. Theres more of it in Diet Coke than sugared Coke.

Otara

Hmm. Maybe I’ll restrict things to just what I have in the morning and see if things even out. I’ll try just water the rest of the day for a while. Especially since it seems I’ve already had the withdrawal if that’s what it was. I’m hoping for a simple solution!

For me it was the aspartame. Gives me wicked headaches.

Sigh. Not in the lab, it doesn’t.

Back in the early 90’s, I switched from regular pop to diet, because I drank so much of it and was gaining weight. After a couple of years of it, I was drinking 8-10 cans a day of diet pop. Along the same time period, I was having a lot of headaches. A LOT. Then I started to notice the correlation (yeah, I’m a slow learner.) So I quit cold turkey. Headaches stopped. Immediately and permanently.

Proof enough for me.

It does in my body. I am a scientific researcher involved in the oversight of medical research. Effects on small subpopulations are often below the statistical sensitivity of many standard clinical trials. I eat or drink aspartame I get migraines. I stop, the migraines do as well.

Aspartame also gives me migraines.

Then you know quite well that you can’t self-select, and you can’t control all the other variables (such as the caffiene levels people always forget to mention) with a single subject. No lab study has every found a correlation between aspartame intake and headaches, even among populations that claim to be susceptable. What they have found is a correlation between being TOLD you ingested aspartame and headaches. It’s strikingly similar to parents who “know” that sugar causes hyperactivity in their kids, or that their kid became autistic “right after” that vaccination.

Because of these Internet memes, Aspartame is probably the best studied artificial substance on the planet; please, just read the 4,919 previous threads on this topic. I don’t expect you to be convinced; just stop spreading the misinformation to others.

If you’re a scientific researcher, can you explain how you performed a controlled double-blind experiment on yourself? And also, how your experiment with a sample size of one is better than all the larger experiments that show the opposite result?

Where in my post did I generalize to anyone but me? I have never held my experience as being generalizable to anyone but me. It is not unthinkable that individuals exist who do have sensitivities to various chemicals in a low enough number that double blind tests would not identify them as being statistically significant. This is not a novel concept.
I related my personal experience: In the 1980s when Nutrasweet came out I began drinking diet coke for the first time. I got raging headaches. I stopped and they went away. In college I began drinking diet ginger ale and got raging headaches. I stopped and they went away. I drank no coffee, tea or other sodas, only water, at the time.

To be clear, I switched to diet coke from regular.

You stated in your last post, and in the quote above, that there is a causal relationship between artificial sweetners and your headaches. There is no evidence that this happens, and to my knowledge no mechanism by which it can happen. As TimeWinder said above, stop spreading misinformation.
If I’m wrong about the science, please correct me and I’ll retract the above.

However, the point remains that scientific studies are notoriously poor at identifying small populations of outliers. Individualized medicine, especially with respect to cancer treatment has many examples of specific genetic outliers who are more (or less) responsive to particular treatments. Current research studies in cancer are now trying to find those small outlier groups that have previously missed side effects or efficacy differences. It is NOT misinformation to suggest that while the current scientific studies may not show a causal link and for the majority of the population the risk is negligible, that for certain individuals based on their own genetic makeup may show an increased sensitivity to nay particular drug or chemical.

Anecdotal evidence is not science. I agree. Science is a particular set of methodologies. However, anecdotal evidence is not de facto wrong, it is just not generalizable until proven so.

You are welcome to argue the merits of these individual articles I quickly pulled off Medline. That is fine- I was not a reviewer of these articles and have not examined the data.

  1. "Headache. 1989 Feb;29(2):90-2.
    Aspartame as a dietary trigger of headache.

Lipton RB, Newman LC, Cohen JS, Solomon S.
Abstract

Many dietary factors have been implicated as possible precipitants of headache. There have been recent differences of opinion with regard to the effect of the artificial sweetener aspartame as a precipitant of headache. To assess the importance of aspartame as a dietary factor in headache, 190 consecutive patients of the Montefiore Medical Center Headache Unit were questioned about the effect of alcohol, carbohydrates and aspartame in triggering their headaches. Of the 171 patients who fully completed the survey, 49.7 percent reported alcohol as a precipitating factor, compared to 8.2 percent reporting aspartame and 2.3 percent reporting carbohydrates. Patients with migraine were significantly more likely to report alcohol as a triggering factor and also reported aspartame as a precipitant three times more often than those having other types of headache. The conflicting results of two recent placebo-control studies of aspartame and headache are discussed. We conclude that aspartame may be an important dietary trigger of headache in some people."

  1. "Biol Psychiatry. 1993 Jul 1-15;34(1-2):13-7.
    Adverse reactions to aspartame: double-blind challenge in patients from a vulnerable population.

Walton RG, Hudak R, Green-Waite RJ.

Department of Psychiatry, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, Youngstown.

Comment in:

* Biol Psychiatry. 1994 Aug 1;36(3):206-8. 

Abstract

This study was designed to ascertain whether individuals with mood disorders are particularly vulnerable to adverse effects of aspartame. Although the protocol required the recruitment of 40 patients with unipolar depression and a similar number of individuals without a psychiatric history, the project was halted by the Institutional Review Board after a total of 13 individuals had completed the study because of the severity of reactions within the group of patients with a history of depression. In a crossover design, subjects received aspartame 30 mg/kg/day or placebo for 7 days. Despite the small n, there was a significant difference between aspartame and placebo in number and severity of symptoms for patients with a history of depression, whereas for individuals without such a history there was not. We conclude that individuals with mood disorders are particularly sensitive to this artificial sweetener and its use in this population should be discouraged."

  1. "Pediatr Neurol. 2003 Jan;28(1):9-15.
    The diet factor in pediatric and adolescent migraine.

Millichap JG, Yee MM.

Division of Neurology, Children’s Memorial Hospital, Chicago, Illinois 60614, USA.
Abstract

Diet can play an important role in the precipitation of headaches in children and adolescents with migraine. The diet factor in pediatric migraine is frequently neglected in favor of preventive drug therapy. **The list of foods, beverages, and additives that trigger migraine includes cheese, chocolate, citrus fruits, hot dogs, monosodium glutamate, aspartame, fatty foods, ice cream, caffeine withdrawal, and alcoholic drinks, especially red wine and beer. **Underage drinking is a significant potential cause of recurrent headache in today’s adolescent patients. Tyramine, phenylethylamine, histamine, nitrites, and sulfites are involved in the mechanism of food intolerance headache. Immunoglobulin E-mediated food allergy is an infrequent cause. Dietary triggers affect phases of the migraine process by influencing release of serotonin and norepinephrine, causing vasoconstriction or vasodilatation, or by direct stimulation of trigeminal ganglia, brainstem, and cortical neuronal pathways. Treatment begins with a headache and diet diary and the selective avoidance of foods presumed to trigger attacks. A universal migraine diet with simultaneous elimination of all potential food triggers is generally not advised in practice. A well-balanced diet is encouraged, with avoidance of fasting or skipped meals. Long-term prophylactic drug therapy is appropriate only after exclusion of headache-precipitating trigger factors, including dietary factors."

  1. "Cases J. 2009 Sep 15;2:9237.
    Vestibulocochlear toxicity in a pair of siblings 15 years apart secondary to aspartame: two case reports.

Pisarik P, Kai D.

University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, Tulsa, 1111 S. St. Louis Ave., Tulsa, OK 74120-5440, USA. paul-pisarik@ouhsc.edu
Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Aspartame may have idiosyncratic toxic effects for some people; however, there are few case reports published in the medical literature. We present two case reports in a pair of siblings, one with a vestibular and the other with a cochlear toxicity to aspartame. The cochlear toxicity is the first case to be reported, while the vestibular toxicity is the second case to be reported.

CASE PRESENTATION: A 29-year-old white female had a 20-month history of nausea and headache, progressively getting worse with time and eventually to also involve vomiting, vertigo, and ataxia. She was extensively evaluated and diagnosed with a vestibular neuronitis versus a chronic labyrinthitis and treated symptomatically with limited success. In response to a newspaper article, she stopped her aspartame consumption with total cessation of her symptoms. Fifteen years later, her then 47-year-old white brother had a 30-month history of an intermittent, initially 5-10 minute long episode of a mild sensorineural hearing loss in his right ear that progressed over time to several hour episodes of a moderately severe high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss to include tinnitus and a hypoesthetic area in front of his right tragus. After a negative magnetic resonance scan of the brain, he remembered his sister’s experience with aspartame and stopped his consumption of aspartame with resolution of his symptoms, although the very high frequency hearing loss took at least 15 months to resolve. For both, subsequent intentional challenges with aspartame and unintentional exposures brought back each of their respective symptoms.

CONCLUSION: Aspartame had a vestibulocochlear toxicity in a pair of siblings, suggesting a genetic susceptibility to aspartame toxicity. Even though the yield may be low, asking patients with dizziness, vertigo, tinnitus, or high-frequency hearing loss about their aspartame consumption and suggesting cessation of its use, may prove helpful for some."

If I drink more than a litre of Crystal Light, which contains aspartame, in a short period, I get a headache. If I guzzle down a similar amount of an aspartame based diet soda, I do not get a headache. I don’t know what chemical or combination of chemicals causes my headaches.

I used to drink a lot of Diet Coke. I used to get this sick-ish, dizzy feeling all the time. I started to notice a correlation between the DC drinking and the icky feeling. I stopped drinking Diet Coke, and the feeling went away. I haven’t had DC or any kind of soda other than club soda in almost 10 years. In my mind, aspartame is poison, so I stay away from it.

IvoryTowerDenizen, thanks for the in depth response. I don’t have time to reply in kind today, if I get chance over the weekend I will. Do any of your sources suggest a reason aspartame causes headaches?

I suddenly started getting headaches after ingesting aspartame-containing foods when I got pregnant. I hadn’t had a problem before, but now I can’t chew sugar-free gum, drink diet soda, or eat flavored yogurt without getting a pounding headache. I’m pretty much on a whole-foods diet right now.

I sure hope I can go back to it all after I have the baby.