Link to actual study: https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysio...
In addition epidemiological studies have found associations between higher plasma erythritol and clotting/cardiovascular events. So, regular disclaimers about difficulty of establishing health science aside, I would disagree this should 'not influence behaviors'.
Are you saying that when you eat a normal/largish amount of erithritol (say 1-10g), the concentration of erithritol in your brain is similar to what they tested on brain cells in vitro here?
Also, how can they make a link to stroke when testing in vitro?
Erythritol Concentration: 6 mM (0.006 mol/L)
Molar Mass of Erythritol: 122.12 g/mol
Water in human body: 42 Liters
Calculated Total Mass: 30.77 grams (0.006 * 122.12 * 42)
A) all of the erithritol consumed ends up in serum (blood)
B) is equally distributed throughout all the blood in the body
C) entirely bypasses the blood brain barrier
These are huge assumptions. A) is certainly wrong.
B) Is a reasonable assumption. See same note at bottom.
C) Erythritol damages the microvascular endothelial cells, which form the BBB. So it doesn't need to cross the BBB, because that's what it damages directly. The name of TFA's study is "The non-nutritive sweetener erythritol adversely affects brain microvascular endothelial cell function"[0].
N.B. Erythritol is known to pass through the BBB via diffusion, though that's somewhat limited by its partition coefficient (logP) of -2.3. It's a small molecule, so it's not blocked based on size.
Also, this study isn't "just one study". There's a large corpus of research accumulating data both in vivo and in vitro showing both that erythritol causes these problems, and demonstrating how. This was a very thoughtful and reasonable study. The main point of the study was to measure oxidative stress, nitric oxide (NO), endothelin (ET)-1, and tissue-type plasminogen activator (t-PA). Their dysregulation is already well-known to be directly linked to the health of brain blood vessels and shown to be quite relevant in the development of stroke.
Epidemiological studies involving thousands of patients first established a strong, independent link between higher blood levels of erythritol and an increased risk for events like heart attack and stroke[1]. Subsequent mechanistic studies then showed that erythritol makes blood platelets hyper-reactive and more prone to clotting, providing a direct link to thrombosis[2]
Also in response to:
> A) is certainly wrong.
A previous study gave participants 30g of erythritol orally and their serum concentration rose from 4 µM to 6,480 µM [3]. That's why this study chose 6mM - they didn't just do some napkin math and YOLO it - previous studies pointed the way after showing that "(A) is certainly right".
[0] https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysio...
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36849732/
[2] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/ATVBAHA.124.321019
[3] https://consultqd.clevelandclinic.org/evidence-mounts-that-s...
It's not like erythritol is hard for a consumer to avoid. P(serious problems like brain cell damage) does not need to get very high for it to start to make sense to avoid it, and it seems to me that studies done on cell culture can raise P high enough.
Add milk, an alcoholic beverage, or some lemon juice and those cells are unlikely to survive. Meanwhile the standard path of consumption handles the situation just fine before your brain is ever involved in metabolism.
Alcohol is a carcinogen, and even small amounts are linked to increased cancer rates[1][2].
The only thing the WHO, CDC, and US Surgeon General have in common with the “YouTuber med bros click bait hype” you try to wholly discredit is that they probably all do have YouTube channels…
[1]https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/oash-alcohol-cancer-...
[2]https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...
From your first article:
> The amount of alcohol a person drinks affects their risk of cancer. An important factor is the overall amount of alcohol consumed consistently over time.
That, sure as hell, means that you can drink small amounts sometimes, not 0, as there is no such thing. Again, read about hormesis. Here it is for you:
Like anything there’s nuance here. I’m not saying being drunk, an alcoholic, or having a single alcoholic beverage will have no negative affects. I’m discussing the difference between a culture (cells on agar) and the entirety of the human body. You are not going to reproduce the same results they had because your digestive tract, kidneys, and liver are inline.
This is really important because our food contains so many things naturally including the Erythritol in the original article.
Let’s talk about another example. Would you find Fish acceptable? How about mercury? How would you square exposure to mercury due to eating fish?
How many ingredients with negative effects on the order of erythritol are in my foods, cosmetic products, homecare products, food packaging, etc that I need to be aware of? Not how hard is it to avoid erythritol -- but how hard is it to avoid every substance that is at least similarly bad for me?
To answer your question, no, it is not hard to avoid the labeled harmful substances that one knows are harmful.
Like, I can bake a cheese cake just like any other cheese cake as long as I replace the flour for the bottom with almond flour and the sugar with erythritol.
If you poured distilled water on cells in culture they'd also all die.