# Does aspartame keep anyone else awake?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-aspartame-keep-anyone-else-awake/397331
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [March 24, 2007, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-aspartame-keep-anyone-else-awake/397331 "2007-03-24T16:50:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Absolute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Absolute)
#### Post date: [March 24, 2007, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-aspartame-keep-anyone-else-awake/397331/1 "2007-03-24T16:50:32Z")
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?
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [March 24, 2007, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-aspartame-keep-anyone-else-awake/397331/2 "2007-03-24T19:35:49Z")
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](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](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._