‘Chemical Dehydration’ Was the Wrong Term, but He Was Onto Something: A Man’s Story About His Drink Mix and Daily Headaches Has the Comment Section Sharing Similar Experiences

A Reddit post describing how a man connected daily headaches to his drink mix habit has drawn more than 8,900 upvotes and over 1,100 comments on r/BoyDinnerDiaries. The user said he spent a month drinking multiple packets a day of Great Value Tropical Mango Punch drink mix before connecting the habit to daily headaches he had been experiencing.

He said the headaches stopped almost immediately once he quit the mix, and he now suspects the same sweeteners caused unexplained migraines he had as a child.

Switching away from soda and other sugary drinks, the poster said he wanted an alternative to plain water and settled on the sugar-free drink mix, which he said cost about two dollars for ten packets. He was drinking four to five packets a day mixed into roughly 24 ounces of water each, adding up to nearly a gallon of fluid daily.

He began experiencing severe headaches near the end of his workday that were as bad as migraines and largely unresponsive to over-the-counter medication. The headaches occurred almost daily for about a month, and he initially assumed they were caused by cutting back on sugar and caffeine.

He also noticed he was not urinating during his workday, which he attributed to sweating heavily while working outdoors. He said the pattern only stood out to him after his girlfriend commented on how long he was in the bathroom one morning.

Explaining the situation to his girlfriend prompted him to search online, where he found that the sweeteners in his drink mix, aspartame and acesulfame potassium, have been linked to headaches in a subset of people.

The poster initially described his symptoms as 'chemical dehydration,' a term he later corrected in an edit after commenters noted it was not a recognized medical term. He said his symptoms, including the headaches and infrequent urination, stopped within a day of quitting the drink mix, though he said he had not consulted a doctor to confirm the connection.

He said he experienced severe, unexplained migraines as a child that sometimes required hospital visits, with doctors at the time unable to identify a cause. He later confirmed with his mother that he had been drinking large amounts of Crystal Light lemonade, which contains the same two sweeteners, during that period of his life.

The original poster has not had a headache in the two weeks since removing the drink mix from his diet and now plans to raise the concern with his doctor at his next appointment.

Reactions to the post included alternative drink recommendations and personal experiences with sweetener-related symptoms. One commenter suggested a specific brand as an alternative. They wrote, "I know La Croix gets a bad wrap, but the Limoncello is good, especially if you stop drinking sugar because it has a little bit of a 'sweet' flavor to it" [sic].

Another commenter described a similar experience involving water intake during pregnancy. They wrote, "I never knew you could get 'dehydrated' from drinking too much water until I was pregnant and my pee was getting tested often. And my midwife told me exactly that so I started drinking Gatorade instead of just water and it helped."

Another commenter shared their own sparkling water preference, writing, "Of all the big names, the 'Melted Ice Pop' Bubly is inexplicably the one I like best."

The Daily Dot was unable to independently verify the medical details described in this post, including the poster's self-diagnosis and its connection to his childhood migraines. The details above reflect the account shared to r/BoyDinnerDiaries on Reddit.