In my late twenties and early thirties, I started feeling very tired and depressed. It was this heavy, gloomy feeling and sometimes I did not even feel like getting out of bed in the mornings. The tiredness would come and go. I couldn't explain it. I would be sitting in church and suddenly feel so tired that I had difficulty getting up to worship and felt like I just wanted to go lay down. Besides that, for years, I struggled with swollen glands in my feet and I often limped because it was too painful for me to put my full weight on my feet. I also suffered from joint pains, especially in my knees and, even though I loved jogging when I was younger, and even took part in races, I had to stop because my knees and feet was to painful. I really felt like I was getting old before my time and I really could not understand it. I remember visiting my grandmother in 2010 (she was about 88 years old at the time) and telling her that I feel like an old woman and that I don't know what is wrong with me, but I felt like my body was deteriorating at a rapid pace and I was longing back to the years when I had lots of energy and vitality. Well, Granny just laughed at me and basically thought I was just being silly for saying things like that. But she had no idea how sickly I felt. Granny is 94 this year and still as healthy as can be.
I prayed about it and cried out to God to heal me. Then the Holy Spirit laid it on my heart that He was going to do a supernatural work in my life and that He would guide me and that there were certain things that He was going to cut out of my life, that was going to cause me to become healthy again. At that stage, I was wondering what the Lord was talking about, since I haven't smoked a cigarette or drank a drop of alcohol for many years. I also have never touched drugs, so what on earth could be the problem?
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| If ants don't want to eat it, then you know there is a problem! |
A few days later, a friend forwarded an email to me about the side-effects of Asparmate and Non-Nutritive Sweeteneres (the name says it all! Non Nutritive (no nutrition!). As I was reading the list of side-effects, I realised that this was definately one of my problems. For many years, in my desperate efforts to lose weight, I started to drink non-nutritive sweeteners in my coffee and tea instead of sugar. I also drank cooldrink containing non-nutritive sweetener instead of sugar. Now thinking back, my aches and pains, especially in my feet, started at around about the same time when I started drinking the non-nutritive sweetener. I remember following a diet once where they encourage you to drink at least a 2lt bottle of soda containing non-nutritive sweetener a day. I remember feeling very ill during this time and going to the doctor. The doctor could not find the cause of me feeling so sick. Now I know what the cause was! In the days that followed I did a lot of research on Google concerning non-nutritive sweetener and what I learnt was shocking! Asparmate and any other non-nutritive sweetener is a neuro-toxin, attacking the body's nervous system. It is a poison that can cause various serious illnesses and conditions in the body, including depression. Since I have struggled with feelings of depression and gloominess, I knew this was one of the causes and I immediately stopped taking asparmate or any other non-nutritive sweetener in my coffee and tea. There is not one good one, they are all bad. If it is not natural and if it is manufactured in a laboratory, then it is bad for you and you should avoid it! Sometimes they print on the packet: "Asparmate Free", but then they include another type of non-nutritive sweetener. Unfortunately they are ALL poisonous to your body. I started drinking natural sugar or honey in my coffee and tea and the most amazing thing happened... I started feeling better within a few days and I even stared losing some weight! I read every label in the shop before I buy something. They often put artificial sweetener in the cheaper brands of tomato sauce, mayonnaise and in juice. My husband and I prayed about it and in a prophetic word the Lord confirmed to me that the non-nutritive sweetener was poisonous to my body and one of the things that He wanted to cut out of my life. I am so grateful to God for highlighting this to me. Within a few weeks I was already feeling so much better and I stopped feeling the aches and pains in my feet and joints. If I slip up and accidentally ingest artificial sweetener, the very next day my feet would be swollen and painful again, but by the grace of God that hardly ever happens now.
So this is my testimony about how God cut artificial sweetener out of my life and healed me from poisoning myself, without me ever realising it at the time. But I was still not feeling 100% and asked the Lord to show me what else I needed to cut out of my life. That's when I had a dream and in the dream I saw my teeth and I heard the words..."your teeth are making you sick". But more about that in my next post. Till next time. God bless!
