Erythritol May Damage Critical Brain Barrier, Risking Stroke(sciencealert.com) |
Erythritol May Damage Critical Brain Barrier, Risking Stroke(sciencealert.com) |
> 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?
Over the next decade I consumed the whole bag, most of it mixed into plain yogurt.
Now I wonder if my brain is damaged, or I am susceptible to stroke.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44623976
Edit, feeding the sea-lion: Cleveland Clinic has called for a re-evaluation of erythritol's "GRAS" status:
> the present findings suggest that discussion of whether erythritol should be reevaluated as a food additive with the Generally Recognized as Safe designation is warranted.
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/ATVBAHA.124.321...
> erythritol may not be as safe as currently classified by food regulatory agencies and should be reevaluated as an ingredient
https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2024/08/08/cleveland-cl...
If it's actually "medical consensus", you'd find government agencies or professional organizations calling for bans, at least making announcements that it's harmful.
edit:
in response to OP's edit, I'm still not satisfied given that the statement is to call for its GRAS status to be reevaluated, when I specifically mentioned "announcements that it's harmful". At best that's "medical consensus" for "GRAS status should be reevaluated", not "medical consensus is that it absolutely [harmful]".
As a side note if I consume more than 15G of erythritol I will start to see rainbows. I learned that by mistake of consuming a coconut drink that had 15G which seems like a lot to me. I reproduced it multiple times to confirm. I am not alone, found others that experience the same things.
Search for "artificial sweeteners migraine" or "artificial sweeteners migraine visual aura"
Here’s the link again for anyone else who completely missed it:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44623976
For those who actually have any level of intellectual curiosity in this, that should get you started on some of the central research.
Going through the links you provided:
[0] Berry 2025: the in vitro study from OP that I mentioned earlier
[1] Witkowski 2023: the 2023 cohort study that I mentioned earlier
[2] Witkowski 2024: study that found ingesting erythritol "enhances platelet reactivity in healthy volunteers". It doesn't attempt to prove that it actually causes negative health outcomes, but it does speculate that "may enhance thrombosis potential". I'm not sure how reliable that speculation is, given that the study doesn't say (at least in the abstract) whether "platelet reactivity" is an accepted proxy for thrombosis" (eg. similar to cholesterol is an accepted proxy for CVD). It concludes "discussion of whether erythritol should be reevaluated as a food additive with the Generally Recognized as Safe designation is warranted". Again, at best this is consistent with "there's a consensus that we should look into erythritol", not "there's a consensus that erythritol is harmful"
[3] This is just a blog that links to Witkowski 2024.
So in conclusion, you have 1 cohort study, 1 in vitro study, and 1 in-vivo study. I await your "dozens" of studies.
>You’re really leaning hard into the sea-lioning trope.
So what's the implication here? That anyone can make spurious claims about there being a "medical consensus" on some controversial topic, drop a few studies, and then when there's people pushing back denounce them as "sea-lioning"? If we adopted this attitude we'd still be proclaiming that there was a "medical consensus" that ivermectin cured covid, and I can actually turn up more than 3 studies for that[1].
That's why I also said "at least making announcements that it's harmful". What substances do you think are actually harmful, but professional associations have refused to denounce it as such? Moreover if the claim is that it's "medical consensus" that it's harmful, how can layperson verify this, instead of relying on some guy confidently proclaiming as such on a HN comment?
That's all fine. You might have a different risk profile. You might think the scientists have been captured by industry or whatever. You can even say "[x] is harmful". Where you get into trouble is when you go around claiming "medical consensus" or whatever, when such consensus clearly doesn't exist.
I agree with this. I am not waiting for governmental bodies to say something is good or bad for me.