It's very possible that xylitol in toothpaste or mouthwash is considered safe because no one has identified those levels as dangerous. That isn't necessarily an indicator that we know it's safe, just that we haven't looked.
This seems like an insane default. What’s the rationale?
> In studies performed by Dr Hazen’s team, healthy volunteers were given a drink sweetened with 30 grams of xylitol. That’s similar to the amount found in a single scoop of keto-friendly ice cream or several cookies marketed for people with diabetes.
>
> In every volunteer studied, platelets were significantly more prone to clot after consuming xylitol.
Xylitol gum exists in the EU too. It would almost certainly be banned if consuming even a slightly high amount of gum was linked to health risks.
It's not a lack of regulation problem.
I am surprised to see headlines warning of xylitol, because it is a key component in birch water and other traditional health drinks made from birch trees (Scandanavia, Russia, and other places with birch).
The clotting goes away after a few hours, but perhaps that was viewed as beneficial against injuries for those who drank it?
Maybe only within our society it is viewed as harmful, because people are rarely injured (and when they are, they have access to bandages, stitches, antibiotics, etc) and more commonly have chronic health problems that might be exacerbated by the temporary increase in clotting?
Two of the three are problems with excessive clotting, and cancer can have clot formation as a complication.
It's therefore reasonable to assume that increased platelet activity is likely to be harmful.
The SAD (standard American diet) is both a modern marvel of how to feed people cheaply at scale, but its downsides are significant in terms of negative health outcomes: metabolic syndrome, obesity, diabetes and the list goes on.
I do not doubt that there is some connection, but might the risks be elevated with some other aspect of diet, habits, and so on? What would explain the discrepancy between populations?
Would it illuminate much? Seeing that Japan also has much different dietary habbits and much less obesity than the US, so it's not like there's "everything else being equal".
These sugar alternatives are terrifying. I rather just have regular sugar.
> [Xylitol] is also produced by our own bodies through a process known as the glucuronate pathway, one of the pathways by which we metabolize glucose. So how did the authors ensure they were investigating the relationship between dietary xylitol intake and MACE risk? They didn’t.
> In other words, this study provides no evidence whatsoever that dietary xylitol intake has any association with MACE, yet still the authors insist on linking the two in their conclusions
> First erythritol, now xylitol. This research group followed the same flawed design and ended up with the same flawed conclusions. SSDD – same [study], different day.
> [C]onsuming foods and beverages sweetened with xylitol can make the platelets in your blood more likely to clot — a recipe for serious heart events.
> In studies performed by Dr Hazen’s team, healthy volunteers were given a drink sweetened with 30 grams of xylitol. That’s similar to the amount found in a single scoop of keto-friendly ice cream or several cookies marketed for people with diabetes.
> In every volunteer studied, platelets were significantly more prone to clot after consuming xylitol.
> “In the presence of xylitol, platelets become much more angry and ready to clot,” Dr. Hazen reports. “It’s as if our platelets have a kind of tastebud receptor for xylitol that makes them go into overdrive. And that’s very significant because enhanced clotting can stop blood flow.”
I'm glad what I was looking for was in the first piece of text.
Reference to Peter Attia's comment about this: https://peterattiamd.com/xylitol-and-cvd/
...and the HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40790358
