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Kos Diabetes Group: News about Erythritol [1]

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Date: 2023-03-10

I’d like to thank 1BQ for bringing this to my attention last week and providing me with some valuable links (which I will share with you all below).

This is actual sugar not erythritol

A study released recently claims that the sugar replacement called erythritol – used to add bulk or sweeten stevia, monkfruit and keto reduced-sugar products – has been linked to blood clotting, stroke, heart attack and death.

Erythritol is a sugar alcohol. It looks like sugar, tastes like sugar, and you can bake with it. It has about 70% of the sweetness of sugar and is considered zero-calorie.

Artificially manufactured in massive quantities, erythritol has no lingering aftertaste, doesn’t spike blood sugar and has less of a laxative effect than some other sugar alcohols.

After ingestion, erythritol is poorly metabolized by the body. Instead, it goes into the bloodstream and leaves the body mainly through urine. The human body creates low amounts of erythritol naturally, so any additional consumption can accumulate.

Erythritol is an extremely popular additive used in keto and other low-carb products and foods marketed to people with diabetes. Erythritol is also the largest ingredient by weight in many “natural” stevia and monkfruit products. Since stevia and monkfruit are about 200 to 400 times sweeter than sugar, just a small amount is needed in any product. The bulk of the product is erythritol, which adds the sugar-like crystalline appearance and texture people expect in sweeteners.

The connection was found a study done at the Center for Cardiovascular Diagnostics and Prevention at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute. They analyzed 1157 blood samples between 2004 and 2011 looking for unknown chemicals or compounds in a person’s blood that might predict their risk for a heart attack, stroke or death in the next three years. What they found surprised them. Their study showed that higher levels of erythritol in the blood correlated to a greater risk of heart attack, stroke, or death within three years.

An additional batch of blood samples from over 2,100 people in the United States and another batch of 833 samples from Europe were analyzed through 2018. About three-quarters of the participants in all three groups had coronary disease or high blood pressure, and about a fifth had diabetes. Over half were male and in their 60s and 70s.

In a final part of the study, eight healthy volunteers drank a beverage that contained 30 grams of erythritol, the amount many people in the US consume daily. Just how much is 30 grams of erythritol? It’s equivalent to eating a typical pint of keto ice cream, most of which have between 26 and 45 grams of erythritol.

Blood tests over the next three days tracked erythritol levels and clotting risk.

Thirty grams was enough to make blood levels of erythritol in those patients go up a thousandfold and it remained elevated above the threshold necessary to trigger and heighten clotting risk for the following two to three days.

The people with a blood level of erythritol that was in the top 25% of those in the study compared to those in the bottom 25%, had about a two-fold higher risk for heart attack and stroke. It’s on par with the strongest of cardiac risk factors, like diabetes.

People with existing risk factors for heart disease, such as diabetes, were twice as likely to experience a heart attack or stroke if they had the highest levels of erythritol in their blood.

Researchers also examined the effects of adding erythritol to either whole blood or isolated platelets, which are cell fragments that clump together to stop bleeding and contribute to blood clots. Results revealed that erythritol made platelets easier to activate and form a clot. Clots can break off and travel to the heart, triggering a heart attack, or to the brain, triggering a stroke.

The executive director of the Calorie Control Council, an international association representing the low- and reduced-calorie food and beverage industry has said that the results of this study are contrary to decades of scientific research showing low- and no-calorie sweeteners like erythritol are safe, as evidenced by global regulatory permissions for their use in foods and beverages, and should not be extrapolated to the general population because the participants in the study were already at increased risk for cardiovascular events because of their age, or underlying conditions such as coronary disease, high blood pressure and diabetes.

Sugar-free products containing erythritol are often recommended for people who have obesity, diabetes or metabolic syndrome and are looking for options to help manage their sugar or calorie intake. People with these conditions also are at higher risk for adverse cardiovascular events like heart attack and stroke.

So should you throw out your erythritol and stop using products that contain it? I would say not yet. This was an observational study, and although it showed a correlation between erythritol consumption and heart attacks and strokes, it did not show a causation. If you’re concerned you can use a different sweetener such as Splenda or Allulose which do not contain erythritol.

There is no firm “accepted daily intake,” or ADI, set by the European Food Safety Authority or the US Food and Drug Administration, which considers erythritol generally recognized as safe (GRAS).

Science will need to take a closer look into erythritol because this substance is widely available and used right now. If it’s truly harmful, we should know about it.

Additional Reading

https://edition.cnn.com/...



https://www.cbsnews.com/...

https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/...



https://www.nature.com/…

https://peterattiamd.com/more-hype-than-substance-erythritol-and-cardiovascular-risk/

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/10/2157169/-Kos-Diabetes-Group-News-about-Erythritol

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