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When I was 34 years old (25 years ago) I had a very bad day that lead to more than 4 bad months.

I’m going to tell you a shortened version of the story. I COULD tell you the long story because even 25 years later I remember it like it was yesterday, but I want to get to some new information I want to share as soon as possible.

This story is my nightmare.

I was driving to work one morning. As I drove the car into the parking lot, the cars started to spin. I slammed on the brakes because I was not sure if my car was moving or not. The parked cars all appeared to be moving. Really scary.

I managed to get out of the car and had my husband park it. With his help, I got to the office, called my doc and my husband took me in. Some of the dizziness and spinning temporarily subsided but it was not long before it was back.

The neurologist did some tests. Just early stuff. He gave me a drug that he hoped would allow me to stand upright without tossing my cookies. It worked.

I had to make sure I took it exactly on time, though. If I let it wear off; even for an hour, the dizziness was back and my equilibrium was gone. I could not stand. My head would spin wildly even if I was laying on my bed. Debilitating, for sure. Hard to run a company that way, too.

Then the tests ensued. 3 months of them. I’d go into the neurologist’s office every few days and they’d run tests. They were sort of secretive about what they were doing and, frankly, I was too scared to ask.

They gave me an MRI first. Then they did all kinds of tests where they’d lay me on a table, hang my head off the end of the table and flash strobe lights in my face. They’d look into the back of my eyes with scopes. All kinds of tests.

They just kept coming up with more tests and told me to take the pills. Early on they announced that one of the big side effects of the pills was weight gain. It could not be helped, they said, but they were confident I’d lose the weight again. Little did they know that less than a year before I had been going to a diet doc guru and had finally lost 50 pounds. So far I was keeping it off. I burst into tears and told them they had no idea how hard it was going to be for me to get it back off but again, they said that was really not my big worry and to keep taking my pills.

I gained 28 pounds in a month and gained more as the weeks passed.

After 12 weeks they told me I could try to stop taking the pills. They thought the pills might have worked; others before me took the pills for 3 months and when they stopped, they seemed okay. So I took a shot at stopping the pills but first I insisted they tell me what was wrong with me (or what they thought was wrong with me). I had procrastinated asking and since they weren’t telling, that made me even more scared and hesitant to ask!

Their answer: They speculated on three things.

1. They thought maybe I’d had a stroke and were waiting to see if I had another one.
2. They thought I had Multiple Sclerosis. At my age I was a perfect candidate.
3. They thought maybe I had a brain tumor and they were waiting to see if symptoms progressed.

I about fainted. I was glad they didn’t tell me because I was not sure what I would have done next.

I was off the pills for a few days and nothing came back. Then they told me, sadly, that even though they cleared me of some really ugly things, that they didn’t know what happened to me or if it would ever come back.

No guarantees, but go get on with your life.
I did, and it didn’t come back.

25 years later, I now know what it was. It was aspartame. I was a diet soda fiend. I drank about six diet sodas a day. I ate very little. I kept getting fatter and the latest diet gurus at the University I was working with could not figure out why.

Watch this video and you’ll learn why this happened to me and how insidious diet soda really is.

The only part of this video I disagree with is the end. Telling you to drink sugar water; even if it’s made with honey is not my idea of a good move. I suppose it’s okay if you don’t do a lot of it, and you don’t do it often, but it’s not ideal.

What IS ideal is water. Drink water. Plenty of it. Stay hydrated and you’ll have more energy. Your skin will look younger. You’ll begin to crave water and it will become your favorite drink.

I started off drinking fizzy water, flavored with natural elements. La Croix is one great brand. They make lots of flavors. Another options to get fizzy water and flavor it with stevia drops. You can now find them in the grocery store in the baking section (look by the vanilla) or order them on line. One bottle seems expensive but they last a long time. There are other naturally flavored options now; fizzy or still. Just look for them and make sure they are all natural. They have no calories and no carbohydrates.

And if you’re like me, you’ll grow out of those and want just plain water. I drink mine iced.

Latest advice is to drink half your weight in ounces of water – daily. For many of us that’s a lot more than the old advice of 6, 8 ounce glasses.

Drink up.
Cheers,