Diet Coke (Aspartame) & Picking

[Red]

Hello. I'm glad I found this group. I've been plagued with this horrible habit/addiction for nearly 20 years.

I don't know if this will help anyone, but I thought I'd pass along my experience and see if anyone else has run into it, too.

This year, I gave up diet coke after a miscarriage (I read aspartame causes uterine polyps in rats). In doing so, discovered I have significantly reduced the picking episodes. We thought it was the caffeine, but coffee and other caffeinated products don't appear to have the same effect on me. Aspartame does something weird to my head. I actually get hyper when I ingest it...this includes decaf diet cokes. Oddly, I didn't start drinking diet sodas until I was 16 (the year I started picking). I think there is a really strong correlation.

A couple weeks ago, I was addictively chewing gum. I thought it didn't have aspartame (usually nutrasweet is in larger letters). I ended up having the worst picking episode I had in months. I look at the back of the gum package really carefully. Sure enough, it has aspartame in it!!!

[RI]

Oh My goodness... I never thought about aspertame being the problem! But it makes sense almost...

The only type of soda I really drink is diet soda because regular soda is too syrupy for me... but i prefer water...so im going to try to cut out soda in general

Also, I am a gum-aholic... I'm as obsessed with gum chewing as I am with skin picking! ... I'm going to look into gum brands to see if there are any that dont have aspertame to see if I can switch brands

I will report back with how I do after cutting out the aspertame...

thanks for your thoughts and insight!!!

[bella]

oh wow thats a really interesting thing you've come up with, and i guess it makes sense. i also recently gave up caffeinated drinks- coffee and soda, which would fit the same bill, and dont usually chew gum. ive also been trying to stay away from too much sugar. instead ive been glued to water.

however i had a soda today and Swedish fish, then ended up picking. there must be a connection! i'm so glad i read you're post, this is enough to keep me away from soda and too much gum for ever

bell