Erythritol: The Study Is Real, The Internet Is… Not
Listen up, Drifters. Your Fixer here, reporting live from the trenches of Bad Science TikTok.
This week’s drama: “Erythritol crosses the blood–brain barrier and is basically rotting your brain.”
My face when I read that? 🫠
Yes, there’s a brand-new erythritol study. Yes, it’s interesting. No, it doesn’t say what the influencers think it says.
What the study actually did
Researchers took human brain microvascular endothelial cells (translation: the lining of brain blood vessels) and put them in a petri dish. Then they gave those cells a nice little bath in erythritol, a debatable concentration you’d hit after drinking a sugar-free soda...for three hours.
Here’s what happened:
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Oxidative stress shot up (reactive oxygen species >200%).
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Nitric oxide (relaxes blood vessels) dropped.
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Endothelin-1 (tightens blood vessels) went up.
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t-PA (breaks down blood clots) went down.
Those are meaningful vascular changes in a lab setting. Worth noting. Worth studying more.
What the study did not do
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No humans. No animals. Just cells in a dish.
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No digestion, metabolism, or actual blood–brain barrier involved.
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No proof your sugar-free gum is plotting a neurological coup.
This is a mechanistic study. Step one in figuring out how something might work in the body. The “crossing the blood–brain barrier” claim? Not tested. Not proven. Not in the paper.
Why the internet lost its mind
Because “petri dish experiment shows changes in oxidative stress markers” doesn’t go viral. But “Sweetener in your Diet Coke is frying your brain” does.
Social media loves a clean villain. Context and nuance? Not so much.
Here’s the actual takeaway
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The study’s valuable. It gives us a lead on how erythritol might affect vascular health.
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In vitro results don’t automatically apply to living humans. Your body is not a petri dish (hopefully).
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More research...real-world, long-term, human research...is needed before anyone writes the obituary for erythritol.
If you’re at high cardiovascular risk or chugging multiple erythritol drinks daily, maybe ease up until we know more. If you have one stick of sugar-free gum after lunch, congratulations, you’re fine.
Why you should care who’s talking
The study itself? Solid.
The “interpretations” bouncing around TikTok? Unscientific fan fiction.
Science is not a group project where anyone with a ring light gets an equal vote. There’s a reason people train for years to interpret data...it’s so you don’t get duped by a scary-sounding sentence taken out of context.
Bottom line:
Erythritol isn’t proven innocent, but it’s not guilty of the internet’s charges either.
We can appreciate the research, keep an eye on the science, and skip the panic spiral.
XO THIS HAS BEEN YOUR FIXER.
CATCH YOU NEXT TIME, DRIFTERS.
References IRL:
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