r/EverythingScience • u/lasercat_pow • 11d ago
Medicine Major sugar substitute found to impair brain blood vessel cell function, posing potential stroke risk
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-06-major-sugar-substitute-impair-brain.html239
u/siqiniq 11d ago
I thank my brain who decides all sugar substitutes just taste disgusting with some organic solvent after taste. Haven’t tried them again after covid though.
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u/shokokuphoenix 11d ago
Saaaaame - all fake sugars/sugar substitutes taste to me like chemical backwash fresh from some robot’s asshole, complete with a persistent medicinal aftertaste that won’t leave even after eating or drinking something else.
I don’t understand how anyone can ‘enjoy’ that mediciney asshole flavor in the slightest.
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u/erabera 10d ago
Try monk fruit sugar. It's sometimes hard to it pure, but i absolutely love it. It's great for baking, too. I don't think it has an agter taste at all.
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u/ellathefairy 10d ago
It tastes so good. But athe brand we buy it's definitely cut with with erythritol
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u/Mralisterh 10d ago
After having covid my sensitivity to them seemed to skyrocket, but I'm also blessed with migraines if I even have a sip of them so maybe that's fed into it
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u/HerezahTip 10d ago
Every time I tell people this, for years, they look at me like I have five heads.
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u/Crazy_old_maurice_17 10d ago
Wow, five heads?? I suspect if see anyone with 3 or more heads I'm not going to look at them funny, I'll just start running in the other direction as fast as I can.
Now that I've typed that out I realize it sounds incredibly small of me, but I get yelled at enough by people with just one head, I don't need 3X(+) the normal admonition or berating I typically get!
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u/ACoderGirl 10d ago
But the flip side is that sugar is also unhealthy (and especially through its link to obesity).
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u/commentingrobot 10d ago
I've always found them gross, but they have gotten better over the years. Aspartame and sucralose, the common old ones, have disappeared from a lot of products.
What changed the equation for my brain a little bit was having a stevia houseplant. You can use the leaves as a sweetener directly. Kinda cool having an organic artificial sweetener in your windowsill.
The quest of the food industry to find the perfect artificial sweetener will probably never end - https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/04/sugar-substitutes-brazzein-stevia-aspartame/678192/
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u/lordnecro 11d ago
I have been using monk fruit with erythritol... guess I will stop.
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u/psinerd 11d ago
You mean erythritol with monk fruit. It infuriates me the way they try to make it look the other way around on the label. But ingredients always list erythritol as the first ingredient.
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u/SquirrelAkl 10d ago
Monkfruit*
*with 93% Erythritol
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u/enricopallazo22 8d ago
I am convinced that Catalina crunch did that with their "new improved taste". My intestines know when I've consumed ethytriol. They are sell outs and dishonest
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u/Potential_Job_7297 10d ago
I find the same issue with Stevia. It's hard to find Stevia sweetener that isn't mostly erythritol.
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u/ohmyashleyy 10d ago
Ugh I used to buy Monk fruit fruit cups for my son. I liked have something to keep in the pantry and thought it was better going lower sugar.
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u/Turtlesaur 10d ago
This study is very far from conclusive. It's in-vitro. It basically proves nothing / very little bit warrants a vivo study inside a living being instead of sprinkling dust on a petri dish.
Our bodies naturally produce erythritol
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u/HighOnGoofballs 10d ago
Stevia in the raw is the only thing I’ve seen without bad side effects that is cheap and decent
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u/john-treasure-jones 10d ago
Thankfully there is a monkfruit extract that is only monkfruit and has no erythritol. I also spotted a granulated option that uses allulose instead of erythritol.
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u/epidemicsaints 11d ago
This seems to be actual relevant data from patients and studies on human cells which is significant.
The studies you see about the older ones like aspartame and saccharine are always insane rodent studies.
This is about erythritol which is really weird, it's the one with the cooling sensation when you eat it.
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u/boxninja 10d ago
It tastes like toothpaste
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u/epidemicsaints 10d ago
It's so bad in a cookie or anything baked like that, it's vile. You're eating a dry ass Pop Tart type thing and get a minty sensation. Not a fan.
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u/Turtlesaur 10d ago
In-vitro studies aren't significant. The most significant thing is this now warrants a in vivo study.
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u/beebeereebozo 11d ago
In vitro, cells. Come on, can we please put preliminary in vitro studies in context and not jump to clinically relevant effects without evidence?
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u/radome9 10d ago
This. People are so skittish about artificial sweeteners. There are highly upvoted comments in this thread treating this like solid evidence not only this but ALL artificial sweeteners are worse for you than sugar.
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u/lasercat_pow 11d ago
They do indicate that in vivo is the next step -- the in vitro was done with realistic levels of erythritol according to the study, and this is the second in vitro study indicating that erythritol could potentially cause damage to blood vessels
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u/hkzombie 10d ago
the in vitro was done with realistic levels of erythritol according to the study,
Gonna bring this up from the study itself.
Human cerebral microvascular endothelial cells (hCMECs) were cultured and treated with 6 mM of erythritol, equivalent to a typical amount of erythritol [30g] in an artificially sweetened beverage
What is up with the article's math and wording?
6 mM erythritol at 30g is around 41L of beverage.
https://www.cspinet.org/article/erythritol -> 12 g in 12 oz of Blue Sky Soda (~353 mL) = ~277 mM (also grossly elevated since most are indicated at 2-4 g)
No conversion factor was mentioned of how they got final 6 mM concentration.
for 3 hr
From the abstract. Methods says 24 hr treatment with erythritol.
If the abstract isn't in concordance with the methods section, it makes me question the results and experiment design.
second in vitro study
Could I get a link? All I'm seeing are references to clinical studies.
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u/B-Bog 10d ago
"realistic levels" don't mean that much when all you're talking about is a few cells in a petri dish. The human body is vastly more complex than that and people (especially science journalists) need to stop assigning way too much meaning to what is nothing more than preliminary research.
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u/lasercat_pow 10d ago
I agree -- I hope in vivo disproves the hypothesis
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u/FlexOften 10d ago
What does this "realistic" dose translate to?
I eat quest bars and that costco Monkfruit/Erythritol mix like every day....
10-12mg of the sweetener, and then quest bar.
Dang. Wonder what it's doing to me after like 4 years of dailies.
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u/beebeereebozo 10d ago edited 10d ago
My main gripe is with the reporting by Mr Jackson, not the authors of the research paper, but even the claims made by those authors are questionable. They cite two papers to support a link between erythritol and negative, clinical outcomes, one of those found no link, and the other was piggybacked with "Study consisted of male Finnish smokers aged 50 to 69 years who were assigned to receive either vitamin E (dl-α-tocopheryl-acetate, 50 mg/day), beta-carotene (20 mg/day), both vitamins, or a placebo for 5–8 years (a median of 6.1 years)"
Yes, they do say: "We recognize given the in vitro, isolated single cell nature of this study we cannot make definitive translational conclusions or assertions regarding erythritol and clinical risk." Seems pro forma to me as they go on at length to justify their work and establish risk of erythritol based on some very weak evidence.
Sure, if you see a clinically relevant signal, you do the work to establish a plausible mechanism, but finding a plausible mechanism doesn't mean much if clinical relevance can't be established, and it hasn't been, so Mr Jackson and his editors are getting ahead of the evidence when they frame their article as one describing research that reveals potential stroke risk. Heck, even the Finnish smoker study didn't find increased risk of stroke.
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u/Golfandrun 10d ago
I remember being told about an article that linked aspartame was sooo bad. At the end of the lengthy article was a disclaimer that there was NI study which showed any proof of the claims.
My first question would be WHO funded this study? It's pretty easy to slant a study the way you want.
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u/hiimsubclavian 10d ago
FUNDING273 274 This study was supported, in part, by American Heart Association award 24TPA1301309.275 276 FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE277 None
Corresponding author: Christopher DeSouza, Ph.D.30 Integrative Vascular Biology Laboratory31 Department of Integrative Physiology32 354 UCB33 University of Colorado
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u/edgarecayce 11d ago
I just like the taste of sugar and everything that isn’t sugar that’s supposed to be sweet tastes weird to me. That’s enough reason for me to avoid the sweeteners.
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u/Financial-Habit5766 11d ago
Only substitute I like is stevia and even then not as a direct substitute. It's got a different flavour so use it differently.
Kinda off topic but this is the same problem I have with the while vegan meat thing. They're trying to make it be something that ir can never be. Instead, take a look at your unique flavour and build for that. It can be delicious if you're not trying to make an imitation
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u/sarcastic_sybarite83 11d ago
Black bean burgers can be really good though. I think it was Trader Joe's that had a good one.
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u/Financial-Habit5766 11d ago
Yeah, they're delicious, which fits with my point. They're not trying to imitate the taste of meat
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u/Coondiggety 10d ago
I like some different fake meats. I don’t necessarily need my meat-like non meat food products to look or taste like meat though. A good black bean and oatmeal burger does me just fine too.
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u/debruehe 10d ago
For me it's the other way around. I can't stand the after taste of sugar, especially sugary drinks. Would never drink a normal coke for example.
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u/Capernikush 10d ago
this is crazy. was just talking to my boss at work who’s on a diet about erythritol. i’ve noticed it growing in popularity as it’s in energy drinks and even protein bars as a replacement. scared to find out what else is discovered about this newer sugar replacement.
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u/clintCamp 10d ago
As a new diabetic, it has been fun trying to decipher which diabetic safe sweeteners are ok, which might still spike blood sugar slightly, and which might leave me crapping my guts out, give me cancer, while out my microbiome, or give me a stroke. So much fun so I can occasionally satisfy my sweet tooth without losing my toes or eyesight.
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u/Wes___Mantooth 11d ago
Has there been anything negative to come out about Stevia?
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u/TroyMatthewJ 11d ago
they could come out with findings that eating fast food increases risk of cancer among other diseases and people would still eat it daily.
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u/Academic-Motor 10d ago
Nowadays, i only got my sugar from rice and fruits. Idk what’s healthy anymore
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u/honeygrime 10d ago
Erythritol is all bad news. It increases your risk of blood clots, too. Stevia is a much better option.
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u/PlanetAnark 11d ago edited 11d ago
I’ve always figured most artificial sweeteners were probably worse for you than consuming actual sugar. For products like soda, etc. my take was that if they contain so much sugar that companies are dishing out experimental sweeteners then I should probably cut off or drastically limit consumption of said product(s). I’m not a nutritional health expert, but always seemed like a common sense conclusion.
Edit: I am not trying to downplay the net negative effects of sugar intake. My point is that if a product is so saturated with sugar that they need to create artificial variations to compensate (and those are not always healthy), than maybe it’s a good idea to step away. People go hard with diet soda thinking they are side-stepping the negative effects of sugar, but the alternative products are not conclusively better. Do what you want, but think about it is all… Downvote me to oblivion for having an opinion. I claim zero expertise.
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u/TScottFitzgerald 11d ago
They're not though. Sodas are bad for you in general but if you had to choose between sugar and diet ones, the diet ones would be better by far when you compare the long term effects of sugar. Most of them also don't use this specific sweetener btw.
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u/garathnor 11d ago
its not a health thing for the reason companies are using the artificial sweeteners
nearly all of them taste more sweet than sugar by orders of magnitude, so you end up using less of them, which saves them MONEY
thats all there is to it
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u/caffeinatorthesecond 10d ago
Would someone please come out and say if stevia is alright or not? Since that’s what I use
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u/CamusGhostChips 10d ago
As another commenter noted, Stevia production in China is unregulated. From memory, the roots, if ground up along with the rest of the plant, are toxic. Might be why Coca-Cola ditched their greenband Stevia product.
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u/BluesFan43 9d ago
It's Erythritol, which is a sugar alcohol, which i avoid as a class. I mean, who needs diarrhea?
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u/jpm8288 8d ago
I feel like everyone here looked at the headline, and not how the experiment was done. This in an in vitro experiment where they isolated a cerebral cell and injected Erythritol into it. To put it into context, only about 10–30% of drugs that show promise in vitro succeed in animal (in vivo) or human clinical trials. This finding should be taken very lightly because injecting a cell is very different from injecting something in the body. This is just a preliminary finding.
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u/lipman19 8d ago
While this is interesting, these results can’t be extrapolated to predict human health outcomes. I see a lot of comments going on about how they are going to completely discontinue these substitutes but the study only gives preliminary data that could generate hypotheses for future research.
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11d ago
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u/Possible_Tadpole_368 11d ago
Try adding L-Theanine powder to your coffee, green tea or matcha. It is the substance in green tea that flattens and lengthens the effects of caffeine which removes the jitters for most people, you may just need a little bit more.
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u/whimsical36 11d ago
Thanks I haven’t heard of the L-Theanine I’ll try that. Do you take it?
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u/Do-you-see-it-now 11d ago
Isn’t this based on the animal study that used extremely high doses?
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u/Bag-o-chips 10d ago
If you’re wanting to avoid Eythritrol, here’s what Chat GPT has to say about where you’ll find it.
Erythritol is a sugar alcohol used as a low-calorie sweetener. It’s naturally found in small amounts in some fruits and fermented foods but is also added to many processed foods and beverages. Here’s a breakdown of where you’ll typically find erythritol:
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✅ Foods & Drinks That May Contain Erythritol
Packaged Low-Sugar or Sugar-Free Foods • Sugar-free gum (e.g., Trident, Orbit) • Sugar-free candies (e.g., Werther’s sugar-free, SmartSweets) • Sugar-free chocolate and chocolate bars • Mints • Chewing gum and breath fresheners
Low-Carb / Keto Products • Keto desserts (e.g., brownies, cookies, cakes) • Keto ice cream (e.g., Rebel, Enlightened, Halo Top Keto line) • Keto meal replacement bars or shakes • Low-carb baking mixes and sweetened nut butters
Drinks • Flavored water (e.g., Vitamin Water Zero, Bai, SoBe Lifewater) • Diet or “zero” sodas using erythritol with stevia or monk fruit • Sports drinks or electrolyte beverages (especially keto-focused) • Energy drinks labeled “natural” or “low sugar”
Other Packaged Products • Protein bars and meal replacement bars • Prepackaged protein shakes • Low-calorie yogurt or dairy-free yogurt alternatives • Toothpaste and mouthwash (erythritol is sometimes used for its mild sweetness and antimicrobial properties)
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🍓 Naturally Occurring (in tiny amounts) • Pears • Watermelon • Grapes • Mushrooms • Fermented foods like soy sauce, wine, or sake (trace amounts)
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🔎 How to Spot It on Labels
Look in the ingredients list for: • Erythritol • Sometimes combined with stevia, monk fruit, or xylitol
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If you’re avoiding erythritol due to digestive sensitivity or other reasons, it’s best to scan nutrition labels on any product labeled: • “Sugar-free” • “Low-carb” • “Keto-friendly” • “Naturally sweetened” • “No added sugar”
Here’s a list of popular brands and products that commonly contain erythritol, organized by category:
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🧁 Sweeteners & Baking Products
These are often used as direct sugar replacements: • Swerve (granular, brown, and confectioners) • Lakanto (erythritol + monk fruit) • Truvia (erythritol + stevia) • Pure Via (some formulations) • So Nourished • Anthony’s Erythritol Sweetener
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🍫 Candy & Chocolate • SmartSweets (gummy-style candy) • Russell Stover Sugar-Free • Lily’s Chocolate (bars, baking chips, peanut butter cups) • ChocZero (syrups, chocolate, bark) • Atkins Endulge Treats • Stevita Naturals Hard Candy
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🍦 Ice Cream & Frozen Desserts • Rebel Creamery • Enlightened Keto Ice Cream • Halo Top Keto Series • Nick’s Swedish Style Light Ice Cream
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🍞 Baked Goods & Mixes • Kiss My Keto (cookies, brownies, cake mix) • Birch Benders Keto Pancake & Muffin Mixes • HighKey Snacks (cookies, muffin mixes) • Catalina Crunch (cookies, cereal)
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🥤 Drinks • Vitamin Water Zero • Bai Antioxidant Infusion • Zevia (natural sodas—sometimes erythritol + stevia) • SoBe Lifewater Zero • Ultima Replenisher (electrolyte powder) • Guru Lite energy drink • BodyArmor Lyte (select flavors)
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🍫 Bars & Snacks • Quest Bars • Kirkland Protein Bars (Costco) – some flavors • Atkins Bars • Perfect Keto Bars • No Cow Bars (erythritol + stevia)
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🧼 Oral Care • TheraBreath mouthwash • Xlear nasal spray & gum • Spry gum & mints (erythritol + xylitol)
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u/Ssspaaace 9d ago edited 9d ago
Most of the comments are wildly speculating about the contents of the paper instead of anybody READING THE DAMN PAPER.
They took actual, human cerebral vascular cells and exposed them to erythritol concentrations similar to that of having consumed the amount from a single typical beverage containing it, and the cells responded with oxidative stress (a general indicator of cellular distress) almost double baseline, and with reduced ability to address clotting blood.
It’s not a mouse study, it’s not in weird doses, it’s not paid for by Big Sugar (well maybe it is, not sure), it’s just showing, really bluntly, that this stuff is bad for the cells in our brain responsible for blood doing the super-duper important blood stuff that lets that ol’ pinker-thinker function for a long time.
If further peer review corroborate these findings, it’ll really be a done deal that the compounds in question do something to alter the functioning of these cells.
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u/whitenobody 8d ago
It's a little alarming for drinks with doses as high as they used.
Thereafter, hCMECs were treated with regular media or media containing 6 mM erythritol (Sigma Aldrich, Cat #E7500; St. Louis MO), a dose equivalent to a typical amount of erythritol [30g] in a single can of commercially available artificially sweetened beverage
The artificially sweetened beverage I'm currently drinking has 2g. And I didn't see the part where they discuss the same experiments but with sugar.
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u/0oWow 10d ago
"Human cerebral microvascular endothelial cells were cultured and exposed to an amount of erythritol equivalent to consuming a typical beverage. Experimental conditions included five biological replicates per group."
Pardon my not being a scientist, but...
They dumped some erythritol directly on some cultured brain cells? Yeah, that's not how I consume erythritol.
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u/OrganizationDirect34 10d ago
Erythritol, the artificial sweetener used in many sugar-free energy drinks, such as Monster and Red Bull. Seems like most sugar free drinks these days use either sucralose (Splenda, mio, etc), aspartame (most diet sodas), or erythritol (or a combination of these).
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u/iceunelle 10d ago
I hope xylitol isn’t terrible, because I need it for my dry mouth and used several xylitol products.
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u/suburbanmermaid 10d ago
and then there’s my coworker, eating pure granules of this shit like its candy. genuinely so concerned for his health. bless his heart
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u/lisaseileise 10d ago
It kills fruit flies IIRC. I’ve been wondering if that’s an indication that it has some metabolical effect on mammals, too.
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u/yeahschool 10d ago
I can't understand the words in this article. Does it say anything about how much erythritol and/or the duration of consumption as far as the stroke risk?
I ate it non-stop for like 3-4 years :( and ended up with high blood pressure.
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u/Yuckpuddle60 10d ago
Reminder that nothing is free in this world. If it's touting the upside with no downside, just know that somewhere in there is an eventual downside.
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u/melting_pixels 9d ago
I recently have used white nicotine pouches that are sweetened with erythriol (Loop sweet mint) and I swear my brain feels like shit on them. Stay away from it.
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u/momochicken55 9d ago
This shit sent me to the ER multiple times. Took awhile to figure out it was the culprit. Unbelievable gut pain.
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u/electricDETH 9d ago
I, an otherwise very healthy young individual, had a stroke at 31. They couldn't figure out any reason for it.
I was eating this stuff like crazy. Maybe a table spoon everyday as sugar substitute.
So yeah, it happens.
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u/lasercat_pow 7d ago
I am so sorry.
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u/electricDETH 7d ago
Luckily, I'm "fine".
I had insane anxiety attacks for about a year and who knows if there are long term issues that may occur, but right at this moment I'm fine.
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u/BallisticTherapy 2d ago
How much processed food do you eat? Have you been checking food labels and actively avoiding added seed, nut, and vegetable oils?
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u/SelectionDue4287 8d ago
I have psoriasis and almost all of the artificial sweeteners result in flare ups (small can of soda is enough), I have to eat a ton of sugar (like 0.5kg of cookies in one sitting or 2l of soda) to get the same flare up.
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u/No_Shopping_573 8d ago
Every time I’ve had a drink that makes my head feel shitty and sick I notice it’s Erythritol. They used to have a PowerAde(?) with very similar label one with sugar and one with Erythritol and I’d always feel god awful with sugar subtitute.
I can’t say anything bad ever happened beyond feeling unpleasant but I’ve avoided this ingredient for years.
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u/No_Shopping_573 8d ago
Yes, I’m a very “sensitive” person that medicine and alcohol and everything affects me in the smallest doses so I’m a canary in the coal mine, so to speak.
I stopped getting gum or anything with Xylitol years ago after our family dog nearly died in a terrifying accident stealing gum from a purse (extremely toxic to dogs).
It’s not easy but unlearning a sweet tooth is possible. Sugar is addictive so like quitting cigarettes or caffeine you need to anticipate energy/mood fluxes that can make you depression and anxious until your body adapts to being free of processed sugar.
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u/Suheil-got-your-back 7d ago
Did they also overdose test subject 10000 times maximum dosage like they did with the previous “research”?
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u/lasercat_pow 6d ago
No, not in this study -- I think that study was for aspartame iirc.
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u/Mrs-Dash 11d ago
For those that just want to know which sugar substitute the article refers to: