7 ms·
Erythritol linked to brain cell damage and stroke risk
- IcyWindows 1y agoHmm, the dose seems odd. Would the whole drink amount really all be given to those cells?
- abeyer 1y agoI could be off, my molar math is pretty rusty, but a back of the envelope stab seems like 6mM concentration would be _way_ below the 30g "serving" in a drink so assume their "equivalent of" is taking into account the concentrations estimated in the body after consumption or some such.
- MichealCodes 1y agoI've consumed large amounts of erythritol for probably 10+ years. What should I watch for? Blood pressure?
- ryanmerket 1y agoUnless you're a cell, this study isn't super relevant to you. * It does not show human harm, only cellular disruption. * It uses an unnatural exposure method. * It builds on epidemiological correlations that may be reverse causality. * It does not account for systemic factors, metabolism, or adaptive responses.
- seec 1y agoYes the conclusion is baffling. As you say I believe the correlation is reverse causality. It's much more likely that people who consume stuff with "artificial" sweetener are already at risk for stroke than the other way around. If you don't have weight/cardio problems it is weird to consume "sugar-free" stuff and associated because they are almost always worse tasting than the real deal. To have any importance they would need a big population sample and correct for already existing risks for stroke and I believe they would find that this stuff has very little impact, if any. But as always, it doesn't cost much to limit consumption, so why not?
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoThis doesn't apply to a study done in cell cultures.
- OutOfHere 1y agoTo the reader, I strongly and vehemently urge not listening to some rando on the internet (as opposed to the scientists) who asks you to dismiss a study, because the risk-reward calculus here is strongly in favor of not taking the unnecessary risk of brain damage. The rando will not be around to look after you after you get brain damage.
- IAmBroom 1y agoI also urge the reader to not assume a lab experiment produces solid nutritional guidance. Lots of things kill cancer cells in petri dishes that have proven to be useless as medicines. And your repeated ad hominim "rando on the internet" is counter to good dialectic.
- OutOfHere 1y agoThe stroke risk alone is sufficient to not take it. Unlike with treating cancer, there is no meaningful reward here. As I noted, the risk-reward favors not taking it. The possible truth is less important here than the possible consequence.
- OutOfHere 1y agoI would discontinue it immediately, then focus on optimizing overall health, just as everyone else.
- casualscience 1y agoblood clots: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02223-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02223-9. Evidence in vitro suggests enhanced platelet activity. Plasma levels of erythritol are sustained for >2d above thresholds associated with platelet hyper-reactivity after consumption of realistic doses. I use artificial sweeteners, but prefer sucralose or anything else to erythritol. I actually don't understand why people still use it (often in 'health food' because it's seen as 'natural'), there are much safer options.
- bshacklett 1y agoAnecdotally, I have preferred it to sucralose, because sucralose leaves an aftertaste akin to gargling with liquid plastic.
- IAmBroom 1y agoThat's not even an anecdote; it's a taste preference, and that's fine.
- Bender 1y agoI can not speak to this study, just my own anecdotal experience. I consumed sugar free monsters erythritol for a long time and it now causes pain level 2 in my left temple and visual auras in my left eye if I consume more than two cans in a day its not the 142mg of caffeine before someone suggests it. There is a coconut water at the grocery store that has 20G of erythritol and that will quickly give me a powerful kaleidoscope visual aura that lasts for a couple hours. I can make it go away faster if I lay down in a cool dark room.
- 0_gravitas 1y agoNot dismissing your experience, in fact, quite the opposite: I think you should talk to some doctors about this; I've never heard of anything like this before, and I know that when odd vision/eye-stuff is concerned, it can sometimes warrant a visit to a neurologist.
- Bender 1y agoI appreciate the input. I just avoid having hard amounts of erythritol as do many others like me. In my experience doctors just give me blank stares, talk fast and send me away. I am pretty much done with the medical business. I will be fine.
- 0_gravitas 1y agoMy point being that it might not be purely due to erythritol itself, and they're might be something else underlying that only (currently) manifests clearly when exposed to it.
- Bender 1y agoI get it. In my experience with the medial business and especially with the "doctors" in my area this is how it would play out: - They ask a series of questions trying to determine if the issues are a risk to myself or others. - If it's serious enough they may do a series of the wrong scans. - They prescribe me some drugs and send me on my way. Even if by some bizarre chance I had real neurologists and lets say they find something, then what? Statistically my chances of mortality go up the moment I enter the OR and that is even before they attempt to fix something. If the issue is not getting worse I prefer to accept the risk rather than compounding it by letting people confidently act like they know what they are doing. Now if some day it starts getting worse and especially if it gets in the way of normal daily life then I might consider it but even then I would likely leave the country to get better treatment and reduced risk of mortality. In the mean time I keep an eye on the sub-set of people with the same condition the numbers appear to be growing and see how it plays out for them. As of now I suspect it will play out like tinnitus; in that, it will be loosely studied but nobody will know what to do with it or ever fully understand it. I know that I sound jaded. I am. That train has left the station. I've been abused by the medical business far too long. In my unwavering opinion the entire thing needs to be completely wiped and re-created by entirely different people but that is a 42 volume set of books for another day.
- jcynix 1y ago”Erythritol occurs naturally in some fruit and fermented foods." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythritol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythritol The German Wikipedia article says it appears naturally in cheese, funghi, plums, strawberries and pistachios. So maybe the lab experiment might be a bit artifial, or the dose much higher than from normal consumption if the above?
- OutOfHere 1y agoIn natural foods, there are other substances that balance out the harm, making it healthy overall. These other substances are absent when it's used as an additive.
- Eisenstein 1y agoCan you go into detail about these substances?
- oarla 1y agoMaybe the fiber helps?
- burnt-resistor 1y agoFiber is great for gut health but it's actually works against nutrient absorption. Increasing fiber intake requires increasing intake of certain vitamins, possibly with supplementation. It's better to eat things in moderation and know what antinutrients are in what foods. There are tradeoffs.
- majkinetor 1y agoExactly. Fiber sucks up some nutrients so they are either pooped out due to limited digestibility of the colon, or get consumed by gut bacteria.
- OutOfHere 1y ago
- mixwpl0j 1y agoRight but, what are the odds you aren't all that healthy to begin with if you decide to swap normal sweeteners for chemicals?
- ben_w 1y ago"Normal sweeteners" are, in fact, chemicals. For example erythritol itself occurs naturally in some fruit and fermented foods, making it a "normal sweetener".
- leptons 1y agoIt's only present in miniscule amounts in fruit and other produce. As a sweetener it's 1000x to 10000x more concentrated, which puts it in a completely different context.
- airstrike 1y agoPlenty of "fit" products like Quest protein bars use them https://www.samsclub.com/p/quest-protein-bar-variety-chocolate-chip-cookies-cream-brownie-14-ct/P03022780 https://www.samsclub.com/p/quest-protein-bar-variety-chocola...
- abeyer 1y agoand specifically in that high risk group, those chemicals are correlated with an even higher rate of cardiovascular issues than baseline https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-023-01504-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-023-01504-6
- sharifhsn 1y ago“Normal” sweeteners are also chemicals.
- hilux 1y agoProbably a significant majority of Americans use sugar substitutes. Of course, a significant majority of Americans aren't all that healthy - I guess I'm not sure what your point is.
- 1y ago
- duffpkg 1y agoThis is a study done on cell cultures. It should NOT be used to influence behaviors regarding human health. The article linked makes a lot of leaps not supported by the study itself. Link to actual study: https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00276.2025 https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysio...
- hollerith 1y ago>It should NOT be used to influence behaviors regarding human health. It's not like erythritol is hard for a consumer to avoid. P(serious problems like brain cell damage) does not need to get very high for it to start to make sense to avoid it, and it seems to me that studies done on cell culture can raise P high enough.
- Moto7451 1y agoThe test setup ignores the digestive system. There are going to be a lot of substances you can pour on a culture of brain cells with negative affect that your body produces or happily consumes. That’s the point of the parent. Add milk, an alcoholic beverage, or some lemon juice and those cells are unlikely to survive. Meanwhile the standard path of consumption handles the situation just fine before your brain is ever involved in metabolism.
- bestouff 1y agoAlcoholic beverage, just fine ? I disagree.
- majkinetor 1y agoLearn about hormesis then and don't succumb to the yt's med-bros click-bait hype
- Esophagus4 1y agoJeez, what a dismissive (and handwaivy) response. Alcohol is a carcinogen, and even small amounts are linked to increased cancer rates[1][2]. The only thing the WHO, CDC, and US Surgeon General have in common with the “YouTuber med bros click bait hype” you try to wholly discredit is that they probably all do have YouTube channels… [1]https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/oash-alcohol-cancer-risk.pdf https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/oash-alcohol-cancer-... [2]https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...
- Eisenstein 1y agoSeeing as this is an in vitro study, they fall back on a specific human study (Witkowski et al., 2023) for many of the human effect claims. However the referenced study has a few issues: - All study subjects had a "high prevalence of CVD [cardiovascular disease] and risk factor burden" - Erythritol occurs naturally in the body and and this was not accounted for - The study subjects were already suffering from cardiovascular disease and were likely to be consuming more artificial sweeteners than a general population, but this was not recognized or accounted for - Erythritol's presence after a cardiovascular incident could be from consumption or from natural production but only baseline was measured despite data showing dramatic fluctuations after consumption Another one of the studies cited for evidence of human claims (Khafagy et al., 2024) directly contradicts them. It stated said "we did not find supportive evidence from MR that erythritol increases cardiometabolic disease". There are two more human studies referenced but I didn't read them.
- aeze 1y agoOddly erythritol is one of the few things I'm allergic to - it causes me to break out in hives. Since I have to watch out for it, I've noticed it's becoming more and more common as a sweetener.
- niffydroid 1y agoI find it flare IBS. Which means anything with Stevia I can't have as it appears erythritol is used, I think, as a bulking agent
- TomMasz 1y agoI found a Stevia product, White Stevia, in my local organic market. It has maltodextrin added, but that's it. The downside is it's not measure-for-measure with sugar (1/6 tsp vs 1 tsp sugar). https://www.nunaturals.com/products/stevia-white-stevia-powder https://www.nunaturals.com/products/stevia-white-stevia-powd...
- OutOfHere 1y agoThere are plenty of pure stevia powder products. They don't need to be 1:1 for sugar. I am okay with using the tiniest fractional teaspoons to dispense pure stevia.
- westurner 1y ago> erythritol is a sugar alcohol From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43299867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43299867 : >> "Cyclodextrin promotes atherosclerosis regression via macrophage reprogramming" (2016) https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.aad6100 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.aad6100 >> "Powdered Booze Could Fix Your Clogged Arteries" (2016) https://www.popsci.com/compound-in-powdered-alcohol-can-also-treat-clogged-blood-vessels/ https://www.popsci.com/compound-in-powdered-alcohol-can-also... > FWIU, beta-cyclodextrin is already FDA approved, and injection of betacyclodextrin reversed arterio/atherosclerosis; possibly because our arteries are caked with sugar alcohol and beta-cyclodextrin absorbs alcohol
- OutOfHere 1y agoHow would you compare it with alpha-cyclodextrin? Are these available in good quality on Amazon? Have you been taking beta-cyclodextrin for a while? In what dose?
- westurner 1y agoI have never taken beta cyclodextrin for any indication. I thought I would relay the study and that it's already approved for human use. FWIU when the sugar industry maligned fat in the US in the TODO, food manufacturers replaced fat in "reduced fat" foods with fake sugar substitutes which each have harms, high fructose corn syrup, or molasses. What percentage of cardiovascular "plaque" is sugar alcohol and thus apparently treatable with β or α cyclodextrin, in controls and patients with conditions like Arteriosclerosis and Atherosclerosis?
- mediumsmart 1y agoBut you need some brain damage a priori to even consider drinking sugary waters or consuming sweeteners etc. How else are you going to risk a stroke?
- OutOfHere 1y agoI used to inadvertently get erythritol from Quest protein bars, even though I never desired the sweetener. I now regret it.
- mediumsmart 1y agono regrets, never too late to change the diet :) all the things I would have to regret ... here listen to jamnadas and judge for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuOvn4UqznU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuOvn4UqznU