A low-calorie sweetener called xylitol, used in many low-sugar foods and consumer products such as gum and toothpaste, may be associated with nearly twice the risk of heart attack. heart, stroke, and death in people who consume large amounts of sweeteners, according to a study from the United States, cited by CNN.
“We gave healthy volunteers a typical xylitol drink to see how high they would rise, and (xylitol levels) rose 1,000-fold,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Stanley Hazen, director of the Center of Cardiovascular Diagnosis and Prevention. at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute.
“When you eat sugar, glucose levels can go up 10 percent or 20 percent, but they don’t go up 1,000 times,” the way xylitol levels did, said Hazen, who also directs the Cleveland Clinic’s Human and Microbiome Center.
“Humanity has not experienced such high levels of xylitol until the last two decades when we started ingesting completely artificial processed foods and replaced them with sugar,” he added.
In 2023, the same researchers found similar results for another low-calorie sweetener called erythritol, which is used as a bulking sugar in stevia, monk fruit, and low-sugar keto products.
Additional laboratory and animal research presented in both papers showed that erythritol and xylitol can cause blood platelets to clot more quickly. Clots can break off and travel to the heart, triggering a heart attack, or to the brain, triggering a stroke.
In the new xylitol study, “differences in platelet behavior were seen even after a person consumed a modest amount of xylitol in a beverage typical of a portion consumed in real life,” said Dr. Matthew Tomey, a cardiologist at Mount Sinai Foster Heart. Hospital in New York City, which was not involved in the study.
About 61 percent of American adults will have cardiovascular disease by 2050, according to a recent prediction by the American Heart Association. Reducing clotting activity is a key treatment used by cardiologists, so any extra clotting in platelets is a bad sign, said Dr. Andrew Freeman, director of prevention and cardiovascular health at National Jewish Health in Denver.
“When someone has a heart attack, we give them aspirin or drugs like clopidogrel or Plavix to counteract the activity of the platelets. These sugar alcohols appear to enhance platelet activity, which is concerning,” said Freeman, who was not associated with the new research.
“This is another warning that we should switch to water, with the closest drinks being unsweetened tea or coffee,” he said.
Sugar-free gum is just one of many consumer products and foods that contain xylitol, experts say.
Carla Saunders, president of the Calorie Control Council, an industry association, told CNN that the study results “contrary to decades of scientific evidence supporting the safety and effectiveness of low-calorie sweeteners such as xylitol by global agencies health and regulatory. These findings are a disservice to those who rely on alternative sweeteners as a tool to improve their health.”
What is xylitol?
As sweet as sugar with less than half the calories, xylitol is often used in sugar-free gum, breath mints, toothpaste, mouthwash, cough syrup, and chewable vitamins. It is frequently added in larger amounts to candies, baked goods, cake mixes, barbecue sauces, ketchup, peanut butter, puddings, pancake syrup, and more.
Xylitol is a sugar alcohol, a carbohydrate found naturally in foods such as cauliflower, eggplant, lettuce, mushrooms, spinach, plums, raspberries, and strawberries. However, the amount of xylitol found in such natural sources is small, Hazen said.
“If you actually do the math, it takes a tonnage of fruit to be equivalent to a diabetic cookie that can contain about nine grams of xylitol, which is a typical amount on the label,” he said. “It would be like eating salt at the level of a spoonful of salt.”
For commercial use, however, xylitol is made from corn cobs, birch, or genetically modified bacteria.
“It’s sold as a so-called natural sweetener, and because xylitol doesn’t raise blood sugar, it’s also marketed as low-carb and keto-friendly,” Hazen said.
