Good News, Bad News

I'll start with the good news: After a week of abstinence from aspartame, I no longer have those headaches, which I thought were either caused by sleep deprivation or low blood sugar. I DID suffer a pretty bad headache after a few days of aspartame abstinence. A friend advised me that those were 'withdrawal' headaches. However, I still suspect inadequate sleep the night before that bad headache. Nevertheless, I have not gotten my usual 8-9 hours of sleep for the past few days, but I also have not suffered headaches. So maybe aspartame did cause my headaches ...

Also drinking water with meals (rather than sweetened tea) enables me to enjoy subtle tastes and natural sweetness of foods. I use stevia for tea and agave for cereal or on strawberries (that really weren't ripe). However, the hype about artifical sweetners causing cravings for sweets isn't true for me. I still crave sweet tastes occasionally, but I was not previously driven by sweet cravings. (I could binge on peanut butter or baked salmon as easily as I could binge on ice cream or grapes.)

Now the bad news: I have not noticed any significant improvement in gut motility, i.e., I'm back to irregularity, bloating and discomfort. What initially seemed like improvement was just one of my cyclical 'blips'. I feel very disappointed. Yesterday (maybe because it was a gray day), I felt VERY hopeless again about ever having a 'normal' gut or relief from discomfort. I've tried sooooo many different treatments to resolve gut motility. For those of you who want to suggest their personal constipation 'cures':

NO, I won't resort to laxatives, which only treat the symptoms. I'm looking for causes. Besides, most laxatives use either senna or sorbitol which cause excruciating pain for me. I already eat lots of fiber. I drink lots of water and other fluids. I abstain from 7 diagnosed food allergies (which can cause irregularity symptoms). I abstain from caffeine and alcohol, which can affect regularity, but also reflux, which is an intermittent problem for me. I exercise daily (1 hour walk, 15 minutes of yoga, pilates, weight lifting, etc.). I take NO OTC or prescribed drugs. However I use HCl supplements to digest foods which supply magnesium, which I also take as a supplement. Oh yeah, I've also treated for candida (5 months of Nystatin with low sugar diet), which can influence irregularity.

I really don't know what's left ... except move to Maui, where I never seem to have regularity problems. Maybe Maui water, which tastes 'flat' but has no added calcium, unlike Seattle water, is the 'cure'. However I've also experienced improved gut motility after taking high dose probiotics. After finishing a high dose treatment and following that with several weeks of lower dose probiotics, I decided to see how I did for awhile. Now I suspect that I'm back to my 'normal' impaired gut motility.

I often joke that the only thing predictable about my body is irregularity. Yet I sometimes feel hopeless about ever escaping daily symptoms of bloating and cramping pain. I had HOPED abstinence from artificial sweetners was the 'cure' for impaired gut motility, as well as relief from headaches. Unfortunately I haven't experienced continual improvement in gut motility since abstaining from artificial sweetners. However, I will continue that abstinence, because I don't want to consume unnatural chemicals with questionable side effects. Nevertheless I currently think I'm @#$%^& if I do and @#$%^& as far as regularity 'cures'.