The suspected health effects of artificial sweeteners are piling up — and now a new study has linked one type of sugar substitute to a higher risk of heart health problems.
Physician and scientist Stanley Hazen and colleagues at the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute wanted to see if they could find any signs that might warn people that they are at higher risk of heart attack and stroke.
They found it in blood levels of organic compounds used as sweeteners, particularly erythritol; a sweetener commonly used in low-sugar, no-sugar, and no-carbohydrate foods.
Among a group of 1,157 patients undergoing testing at a cardiovascular clinic, those with the highest levels of these compounds in their blood had twice the risk of dying from a major cardiovascular event or having a major cardiovascular event in the following three years .
“Our results indicate the need for further safety studies examining the long-term effects of artificial sweeteners in general and erythritol in particular on the risk of heart attack and stroke, particularly in patients at higher risk for cardiovascular disease,” the researchers said write in their published work.
Artificial sweeteners are considered chemically inert, but scientists note that these low-calorie compounds aren’t necessarily free of health consequences.
Although naturally present in very small amounts in fruits and vegetables, sweeteners such as erythritol can be 1,000 times higher in processed foods.
Research shows that artificial sweeteners can Dirt with the microbes in our gut in a way that leads to it weight gain And diabetesand may increase risk develop cancer.
Part of the problem is that while artificial sweeteners have fewer calories than the sugar they replace — and this may help some people reduce their intake — they taste sweeter and encourage our bodies to absorb even more of the sugary taste want.
“There is an ongoing discussion about the safety of sweeteners – partly because some studies show an increased risk of chronic diseases among those who consume sweeteners, particularly in soft drinks,” explains Gunter Kuhnle, professor of nutrition and food sciences at the university of reading in the UK.
This new study found a link between blood erythritol levels and future risk of heart attack or stroke — a link that also appeared in two other cohorts of nearly 3,000 people from the US and Denmark.
This prompted Hazen and colleagues to investigate possible mechanisms by which erythritol might increase risk, with laboratory studies using blood samples from a small group of eight healthy volunteers.
Blood levels of erythritol peaked and remained high for two to three days after the volunteers drank an erythritol-sweetened beverage before returning to normal. The addition of erythritol to whole blood samples also increased blood stickiness and other measures related to blood clotting, with similar effects observed in animal studies.
It shows in some ways how consuming high amounts of artificial sweeteners can potentially trigger a cascade of changes in the blood that can lead to a cardiovascular event.
“[T]His article effectively shows several pieces of a puzzle examining the effects of erythritol,” says Duane Mellor, nutritionist at Aston University.
But he says the study doesn’t rule out other sources of erythritol in the blood, which can also be made from other sugars in our bodies, especially when we eat a lot and exercise little.
The amount of added erythritol the volunteers consumed was also significantly higher than the amounts allowed in UK store-bought drinks. But the study’s authors argue that their chosen amount reflects the daily intake of some Americans.
Regulators are vigilant about the potential health risks of artificial sweeteners; Your task is to find out what levels of food additives are safe to consume according to available evidence.
Just last year, a study of more than 100,000 volunteers from France showed one increased risk of heart disease with a greater dietary intake of artificial sweeteners that participants recorded daily.
Observational studies like these better reflect people’s usual diets, but they are not without flaws. The challenge is to sift through the many other lifestyle factors that also have a major impact on heart health, such as: B. physical activity, and trying to isolate the possible effects of a particular food or food additive from the overall diet.
University of Cambridge nutritional epidemiologist Nita Forouhi says the latest study expands on previous research on the potential health harms of artificial sweeteners and that its findings warrant further investigation.
However, because study participants already had many cardiovascular risk factors, it is difficult to generalize study results to healthy populations. Three quarters of the study participants suffered from high blood pressure or diseases of the coronary arteries, one fifth did diabetes.
Until we know more about the long-term health effects of erythritol and other artificial sweeteners, it’s probably best to stick with what we know is good for our overall health: reducing our sugar intake by sweetening Beverages and highly processed foods reduce varieties.
“Individual artificial sweeteners are currently not reported, which complicates their tracking and limits the ability to easily research their health effects,” says Forouhi.
The research was published in naturopathy.
