Hi all,
First time poster; apologies for any impropriety.
My girlfriend and I recently made some chocolates with Swerve. We had a couple small pieces, and both felt dizzy and lightheaded afterwards. Has anyone else experienced symptoms like this with erythritol.
We haven’t repeated the experiment, as both of us disliked the taste anyway; the chocolate was a gritty.
We use swerve all the time and haven’t noticed any dizzyness. And I’ve also made chocolate with it, and it can be a bit gritty. I now use my bullet blender to turn it into more of a powder, and make sure it disolves more.
I just made a similar post.
My wife made a dessert that contained erythritol, monk fruit, and maltitol. I felt really shaky and weak afterwards. I’m not sure whether it was from the erythritol or the maltitol, though. I suspected the latter, but maybe I’m wrong.
I suppose I could try experimenting.
Would be interested to hear what others have to say.
Have never felt that kind of an effect. Our consumption is pretty small, though, with just a little from time to time.
Swerve comes in granular form, which might leave your chocolates “gritty”. But it also comes in powdered form, more like powdered sugar.
The worst side effect I’ve had from erythritol has been a slight headache when I first started using it and way overused it in something that I was eating a lot of. I haven’t had any issue since.
In general, I don’t find Swerve or erythritol to sweeten things quite as well as I would like it to. I find also find that stevia will sweeten but often has a “whang” to the flavor that can get overwhelming when I use too much. So it often happens that the recipes I like best tend to have both of them… at least so far. I haven’t tried monk fruit type sweeteners yet.
Good luck! I hope you can find something or some combination that works well for you. Sometimes it takes some experimenting as individuals really do taste things differently.
Some artificial sweeteners make me feel weird also. I could never tell if it was the actual sweetener I wasn’t agreeing with or if my blood sugar just dropped because I had an insulin response. But it’s not unheard of to have issues with AS.
I have read that dizziness is a symptom with erythritol for some people. The same is true for aspartame and stevia. Not sure why.
Yes!! I felt almost immediately dizzy, like I was gonna pass out. Thought it was just me. Thank you for the post
I noticed this also with Stevia; dizziness, nausea numbness in limbs and muscle aches, shaky… And the like I was going to pass out thing too!
Poison?
Yes! Just had Eyrithritol for the first time in a brownie mix. I feel nauseous, lightheaded, and like I want to vomit. Terrible experience.
I made coconut ice cream with swerve and a few drops of monk fruit sweetener last night. Ate about a cup of it after Christmas dinner. I felt slightly light headed. In the morning on an empty stomach I ate some more because it tastes good. This time I developed dizziness and a terrible headache. I think the second reaction was much more intense because there was no food in my digestive tract to mitigate the absorption. This conclusion is supported by my reaction to Swerve in keto donut holes that included psyllium husk powder. I had very very mild light-headed feeling that I was not sure I could attribute to the swerve sweetener
I’ve noticed that Erythritol makes me jittery, anxious and lightheaded but today it got me the worst. I made icing that used a lot of it and after having some, I felt horrible. Heart racing, anxious, nausea, anxiety. I’m throwing out all my Swerve, Swerve cake mix, and Monk Fruit sweetener (made with Erythritol). Going to try BocaSweet. Fingers crossed.
I had a similar experience with a diet drink and reckon the sweetness prompted my body to release insulin to deal with the expected bolus but could only act on the normal amount in my blood!
I am super sensitive to artificial sweeteners (Splenda/sucralose is the worst so I completely avoid it and if I accidentally am given it in a drink or gum then I instantly am aware and feel crummy for a few hours) and have embraced the Keto sweeteners and have been fine with Golden Monk Fruit sweetener but the white seems to make me feel weird. I just made cream cheese icing with Erythritol icing sugar and now my cheeks are numb and my head is dizzy or foggy and arms are also feeling weird/numb too. This sucks. I was looking forward to enjoying a cupcake for my husband’s birthday.
I noticed at Christmas time that the baking I did that contained erythritol affected me more than cookies with Monk Fruit.
Maybe I’ll have to get allergy testing. Having a numb face is not cool!
My husband says “I can’t feel my face when I’m with you” hilarious 
Anyone heard of Guhr or jaggery? It’s from India and it’s supposed to not spike blood sugar and contains a bunch of nutrients supposedly but it m suspicious it might contain alcohol or some sort of relaxant from what I’ve read about it.
Thanks for posting this. I haven’t noticed any dizziness with Swerve but I can’t imagine it could be good for us. Where does one purchase monkfruit? Does it come in a granulated form so I can use it in place of sugar or Swerve?
Interesting post! My wife made a salad dressing that normally uses sugar and she used Swerve instead. The salad was delicious and I had second helpings… and may have had thirds also. An hour later I was feeling very light headed and went to bed immediately. An hour after that I was violently throwing up my entire dinner as well as a lung and a kidney. I just searched for swerve and light headed and found this post. Is it only Swerve or is it all artificial sweeteners that use erythritol?
The Golden Monk Fruit sweetener is my fave. The white is too much like stevia. I’d order off Amazon. Local grocers are unreliable with stocking it. Enjoy!
Great for keto cheesecake bites (I make plain cheesecake with no crust. Into muffin cups)
For me it’s anything with erythritol I think. Try Golden Monk fruit Sweetener. The erythritol icing sugar was the worst for me. Hope something works! Your experiencing of violent 
will probably make it easier to stay away from sugar 
And make sure to check any chocolate chips for ingredients that use those ingredients too.
I would be very worried about an artificial sweetener that does not trigger insulin or blood sugars, that sounds too much like high fructose corn syrup HFCS which does the same?
Artificial sweeteners were originally developed as an insecticide so why would we want to eat it?
Even natural organic sweeteners that are heavily or lightly processed do not look so good either?
This is too Hansel and Gretel for me!
[1] “…Erythritol, the sugar alcohol found in Truvia, is deadly for flies. In the experiment, fly larvae were almost entirely killed off after being fed with the substance, and adult flies produced eggs at a drastically reduced rate. “Erythritol has potential to be deployed in a wider array of settings, targeting adults, egg production, active feeding larvae, or all of the above,” Sean O’Donnell, one of the Drexel professors who worked on the study, told DrexelNOW.
I found this forum doing a search for “monkfruit” and “dizzy” because I’ve just spent a huge sum of money on “golden sweetener with monkfruit” (Lakanto) and both times I’ve used it I’ve felt lightheaded and weak… Turns out it’s got erythritol in it…
This is all really interesting info. I’ve embarked on a test of no sweeteners to see if it makes any difference in my autoimmune symptoms. I thought erythritol is “different” than the others and ok, but based on the info from @atomicspacebunny, maybe not. 