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:

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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.

(Rossi Luo) #33

Is there anyone who has used erythritol for more than years? Appreciate if you can share some experience on erythritol, Well, I started to use erythritol for coffee and passion fruit juice after following keto, and I found that I would diarrhea sometimes (not every time) after having erythritol, usually 1 hour after having it. And I can’t find much information about erythritol on google, as all the information I see is saying it’s safe. So I’m a little bit worried if I should use it anymore.

(Alec) #34

I have used erythritol for about 4 years with no issues. I tested it early on to see if it impacted my insulin, and it didn’t seem to very much.

I have noticed (from a while ago) that if I eat a lot of it that it does lead to increased bowel fluid. For me, I eat a max of 2 teaspoons a day, and it never seems to cause me a problem at that level.

As I have used erythritol for a while, I was intrigued by this study. But people more experienced than me at interpreting these studies were very clear what they thought of it… in summary, it’s BS.

As I said above, I am limiting my erythritol usage now, more really to limit my exposure to sweet as a taste than worries about the effect of it metabolically. However, it is made from a plant, and being a carnivore, it doesn’t really fit with my current philosophy, again another reason I am limiting my usage.

I used to use xylitol, but I switched to erythritol because of what xylitol can do to dogs if they accidentally ingest it (ie it can kill them! :slightly_frowning_face:), so I removed it from the house when I learned this to just avoid the risks to our precious doggo doggo.

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(Rossi Luo) #35

Thanks for the sharing, I think my problem is also related to the amount I used, because erythritol is not as sweet as the real sugar, so sometimes I added lots into coffee and then I got fluid bowel.

#36

I’ve been using it since several years, I don’t know if I did it regularly before keto but I changed from xylitol to erythritol on keto. I don’t know when it was but I looked at some notes of mine, definitely more than 7 years ago.
Never had any problem with it except xylitol is tastier so I kept using that too but in tiny amounts and occasionally.

The used amounts never were particularly much though and since I made carnivore(-ish but that doesn’t allow sweeteners either) my default woe, my sweetener consumption got very, very tiny (I have off days. even there, no wonder I don’t need them even as much as before and I always used little).
I already had a very changed sweet perception when I went keto (a few months without added sugar did the trick for all my family members who cut out sugar) but even on high-carb, I considered eating sugar galore a bad idea so I tried not to overdo it (not so easy as I half-lived on sweets and it continued on keto. but I still was nowhere compared to the average person. I drink unsweetened tea since decades and it was easy to get used to unsweetened drinks in general. easy but slow, it took a few years to like unsweetened coffee and cocoa. I dislike sweetened drinks now with very few exceptions).

But I am a quite healthy one and handle everything edible very well as far as the carb intake isn’t too high. So all the problems people have with food items, I don’t have. Except carbs especially sugars but I don’t get really unwell there either. So of course erythritol is fine for me. So I keep it but 1 kg will last for more and more years, no problem, my SO can eat it mixed with his much tastier xylitol… (But in many cases the sweetener is overpowered by tasty ingredients so it doesn’t matter.)

I can’t measure ketones or BS so no idea if my sweeteners did anything regarding that.

Yeah and a very little amount is enough for that!!!
I only have cats so we kept xylitol. Whenever I make some gift with it (very very rarely), I tell people about it and its effect on dogs.

(Harriet) #37

I’ve used erythritol for at least five years. It’s the only zero carb sweetener that doesn’t have a yucky taste to me or my husband. It doesn’t give us GI issues. I use it every morning in my coffee, I also bake with it and make other types of desserts.

FWIW, I am highly skeptical of the study for the same reason that has been pointed out by others, why didn’t they test the blood of the human subjects taking erythritol?