Does aspartame keep anyone else awake?

In My Humble Opinion
1

For the longest time last year, I couldn’t figure out why occasionally I kept waking up for no good reason in the early morning, unable to fall back to sleep, between 5:00 AM and 7:00 AM (hey, for a college student, that’s early). I also couldn’t figure out why I occasionally had trouble going to sleep, between 1:00 AM and 3:00 AM.

In both cases, I would find that I was dead tired, but unable to actually go to sleep. Insomnia, I suppose.

I finally figured out that this only happens when I drink soda sweetened with aspartame. For some reason, twelve hours after I consume aspartame, it acts like caffeine. When I was waking up between 5:00 AM and 7:00 AM, that was because I had a soda with dinner - and being unable to fall asleep between 1:00 AM and 3:00 AM was because I had a soda with lunch.

Once I switched to just drinking water with every meal, the problem went away. I’ve tested it several times since then, and there’s no doubt - aspartame definitely keeps me awake, after a twelve-hour delay. Sugar doesn’t do it, nor that other sweetener, sucralose (Splenda).

Anyone else notice something similar? When I mentioned it to my mom, she told me she had noticed the same thing herself - something genetic, maybe?

2

What are you drinking the aspartame in? Many sweetened drinks have caffiene, you know.

But yes, one of the possible side effects of aspartame is insomnia.
http://www.mindfully.org/Health/Aspartame-Adverse-Reactions-1993.htm

But it doesn’t appear to be statisically significant.

Generaly, aspartame has no health dangers:
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/43/3/464
Using this method, we found no clear symptom complex that suggests a widespread public health hazard associated with aspartame use; however, we identified some case reports in which the symptoms may be attributable to aspartame in commonly-consumed amounts.