Honolulu, HI -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/27/2014 -- What is wrong with Mitzi’s head? With ‘The Dangers of Kissing and Diet Coke: What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know and Won’t Bother to Find Out,’ readers will ponder that question and more. This multi-faceted saga is a shattering expose on the dangers of aspartame, a graphic look into the rare disorder of New Daily Persistent Headache and the emotionally charged tale of how Mitzi falls in love again with her high-school boyfriend, all because he writes convincing e-mails.

Mensch’s goals in writing her story were simple. “I wanted to elicit awareness of the health risks of aspartame but in an entertaining, at times laugh-out-loud funny way. I wanted to engender a cure for unrelenting, unremitting New Daily Persistent Headache, the most ‘treatment refractory’ of all headaches. I wanted to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of cookie-cutter medicine, to show what happens when doctors are unwilling to look beyond the obvious, when they just push a pill to mask the problem. Patients are more than cases; they are people living lives, loving loves, wanting to be well. ‘The Dangers of Kissing and Diet Coke’ is a self-help book that sizzles.”

Richly written with a strong sense of place, the reader travels with Mitzi across the continental U.S. and back home to Hawai`i where she belongs. Many people only dream of Hawai`i. Mitzi lives it.

Synopsis:

What is wrong with Mitzi’s head? It all began in 1999 when a cat howling outside woke her up. Shocked, she realized the howls weren’t coming from a cat, but from her! Soon the loud nightly animal-like sounds were accompanied by major motor movements. She was sent to ‘Psych’ but her ‘tics’ only escalated until Mitzi was placed on an antipsychotic which turned her into an emotional zombie and created devastating side effects. In 2010 she quit taking her meds and reunited with her first love after a forty-eight year absence. Goldie’s kisses lead to a virus which results in a headache that never goes away. Mitzi muddles through the morass of doctors, drugs and treatments as she searches for causes to and cures from the strange neurological symptoms that plague her. Mitzi’s medical mysteries and turbulent love affair are thought provoking and compelling, leaving the reader with a lot to decide.

Mensch would like to help people through her writing. “Even if one person’s health is saved by eliminating aspartame from their diet, even if one person is cured of constant headache, this book will have meant something to someone. As for lovers who love down through the decades, sometimes it works. They are the lucky ones.”

‘The Dangers of Kissing and Diet Coke: What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know and Won’t Bother to Find Out’ is available now from Amazon.com.

About Mitzi Mensch
Mitzi Mensch was born and raised in New England and attended college in Vermont. An island girl at heart, she moved to Hawai`i where she has lived long enough to be kama`aina. She is the author of Goldie, My First Love and Goldie, My Last Love