Erythritol increases thrombosis risk?

#21

The funding section is rather…eye opening.

In my opinion, the first study is merely an observational study that shows correlation. People who say they ate the most erythritol had a slightly increased risk of a CardioVascular event. However people who ate the most erythritol are also more likely to be eating more junk food generally. So is it the erythritol that was causing the slightly increased number of cardiovascular event or something else (e.g increased consumption of processed food)

The in-vivo study & in-vitro study claims to show bad stuff happening to blood cells. The point on these studies is to establish a basis to carry out studies in human.

However, they then carry out the studies in humans…and then say they did not measure the impact of erythritol on blood clotting in the human tests? Why not? Wasn’t that the whole point?

Or did the data not match the hypothesis and was therefore excluded? Because I find it hard to believe that such a long drawn out study did not take the time to do something as simple and straightforward as taking the blood samples of 8 people and analysing it after erythritol ingestion, to confirm their claimed in Vivo/vitro outcomes. Are we being Ancel Key-ed again?

This study has not proved that erythritol causes increased risk of heart attacks in humans, as widely misreported.

I’m giving this one a pass and will continue to use erythritol which I only eat once in a while in little quantities anyway. Even if I ate more, this study won’t be the reason I stopped doing so

(Central Florida Bob ) #22

I ran into this video from Dr. Brett Scher at Metabolic Mind. I always thought he had a reasonable approach to things when he was with Diet Doctor, and the times I saw him before that (Low Carb Cardiologist?).

I think he takes a reasonable approach to this study. My initial reaction to an observational study like this is generally to ignore it. Especially if the odds increase is less than doubled or tripled. And especially if the number of individual people tested is in the “less than many thousands” range. The risk increase was doubled but the number of people tested was just eight.

I generally have three teaspoons of erythritol/day; two mugs of coffee and one of tea. I haven’t tossed the erythritol and won’t. I have allulose, which cooks better, but stick with erythritol almost purely because of “fiscal prudence”. The best price on allulose I’ve seen is around $8.25/lb while for erythritol it’s closer to $4.32/lb.

I use allulose in my homemade ice creams, not erythritol, so that’s not quite 1 cup per week. OTOH, I don’t know that allulose is any better or worse.

One thing Dr. Scher points out is that we don’t really know anything about health effects of any of these things. Erythritol is naturally occurring in our own bodies, but at much lower concentrations (dosages) than people who eat lots of sweetened foods are getting.

(Joey) #23

Well, by the same token I guess we don’t really know anything about anything.

Personally I’ve wasted too much precious time on reading the actual “unfortunate” study (see other posts). The recent erythritol click-bait videos are now metastasizing at a tiring pace.

(Central Florida Bob ) #24

Well, we know some things, but very little of what gets talked about as being scientifically based.

20 or 30 years ago, I ran across a joke that actually changed my life. The joke was about theoretical physicists and said, “the theoretical physicist is postulated to exist but has never been observed in the laboratory.”

As an engineer who spent most of my day in a lab that stuck with me and made me call myself an empirical scientist. I only accept things that have been proven by experiment. To borrow a quote from one of my inspirations:

Feynman_on_Theory
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And I mean proven virtually to the level of being natural law. Ohm’s law, Newton’s laws of motion, universal gravitation, electromagnetism (what I was doing in the lab); things like that. Even Murphy’s law. :grinning:

Yeah, that leads to lots and lots of uncertainty in life. All you can do is the best you can with what you’ve got.

(Joey) #25

Love it. :+1:

Something like: In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they’re not.

(Central Florida Bob ) #26

Egg-zactly.

(Edith) #27

Ha, ha! I just passed this on to my experimental physicist colleagues.

(Bob M) #28

Now, THAT is funny! :grinning:

Chris Kresser weighs in on it:

(Alec) #29
(Bob M) #30

Ivor Cummins was one of my favorites…until covid.

(Ethan) #31

Agreed. Sadly, our community’s observations of real conspiracies have resulted in a bias to seek out all conspiracy theories!

That doesn’t mean he can’t say anything valid still, but it just means pulling everything apart.

(Bob M) #32

The problem for me is that I can barely read 1, maybe 2, studies in any detail per let’s say every week. Even this erythritol study, I read a lot of it, – enough to know I thought there were some severe limitations – but I didn’t read all of it.

For covid, there’s an overwhelming amount of info coming out (still), and it’s impossible to keep up. For most low carb folk, I can look at 1 to a few studies they site, and make up my mind as to whether they are interpreting the studies correctly. For covid, I find that very difficult to do.