This actually has nothing at all to do with Rheumatoid Arthritis, or Valentine’s Day, but it does have to do with the unknown consequences of a well meaning and completely innocent act.  This particular incident occurred when my children were young and I was trying to ensure that their father lived a long and healthy life. This little story just goes to prove that even the best intentions can be rife with danger when it comes to chemicals.

My (now) ex-husband was a hard working man who did sheetrock for a living and had the dark haired olived skinned coloring of the black Irish (A legacy from the sailors of the sunken Spanish Armada that managed to swim to Ireland’s  shore and decided to stay.) He also had the broad shouldered build of the Viking Invaders that often visited those shores as well–i.e. a 54 inch chest, and the weight-lifter muscled gut to go with it.

So here I was married to a big burly, hard-working man who loved his sweet tea…by the gallon. One day I decided that he needed to lose some weight so that he would live to see his sons grow into men.  Every day I had to fix him a couple of gallons of sweet tea to take to work and drink when he got home at night…. It had to be heavily sweetened with sugar, nothing else would do–not unsweetened, nor sweetened with honey, saccharin, or any other healthy (so we thought back then) low calorie sweetener.  His main objection to these additives was the fact that they do not mix well with cold tea and just sink to the bottom of the glass no matter how much you stir.

Then one day I got the bright idea to trick him, by making his tea just like I normally would with sugar but to sneak in artificial sweetener instead.  So I dumped about a dozen packages of the newly introduced latest and greatest wonder sweetener Aspartame also known as Equal into his hot tea and put it into the refrigerator to cool.  Well lo and behold, he drank it by the gallons without even noticing the difference…for a day or two.  Within a week this huge man who had never complained with a headache in his life came home from work, too weak to move and in such pain from a blinding headache that tears actually poured down his cheeks.

This went on for three days with him refusing to go to the doctor because we didn’t have much money and couldn’t afford health insurance.  By the fourth day, he thought he was dying and finally agreed that if the headache wasn’t gone by morning he would give in and go to the emergency room.

I was scared, all of this was so unlike him. Then suddenly it hit me…the tea!  I rushed downstairs and poured the latest batch out and made a new batch using good old-fashioned sugar instead of the Aspartame and switched out the glass at his bedside with a tall fresh glass filled with ice and put the remainder of the new batch into the refrigerator to cool. Within 24 hours the killer headaches were gone never to return.

I confessed my foolish trick and he being the good natured soul that he was, forgave me.  I later mentioned the incident in a writer’s club where I was a member and one of the doctor’s who was there, told me to quit beating myself up over it.  He said that it was probably just a coincidence.  However, years later I learned that Aspertame when heated to over 86 Fahrenheit (30 Centigrade) forms free Methanol which, when ingested breaks down into the same stuff they embalm corpses with, i.e. formaldehyde, both of which are deadly poisons that have killed people, and caused blindness and other deadly and irreversible long term health problems.  And if that wasn’t bad enough I was literally dosing him with something like twelve times the amount even the FDA said was OK to use.

So the moral of that story is…when it comes to ingested foods and drinks even the best intentions can have deadly consequences. So if you don’t know what you are doing…do a little research before using your loved ones…or anyone else as a guinea pig.

Smiles and Good Health,

Teresa Thomas Bohannon

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 at 8:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.