Artificial Sweeteners and the Brain

I used to go to this burger joint when I was in high school, after classes would end for the day, similar to Arnold’s from the show called Happy Days. I was overweight and would order, the same thing every time, an ice sundae, and wash it down with a diet, no-calorie Tab, manufactured by The Coca-Cola Company. Tab was similar to Coke, but without the calories and definitely with an aftertaste. 

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was going to recall saccharin and aspartame for its cancer-causing claims by researchers and other health professionals in the 1970s and the early 1980s, both contained in Tab, but they never actually did. Saccharin and aspartame are safe for the time being unless you have too much.

Too much? If you consume around 80 mg of total artificial sweeteners (about two sweetener packets or half a can of diet soda), you might have an increased risk of certain cancers and cardiovascular disease. Other examples of high daily intake, based on regulatory guidelines for aspartame, would require a 132-pound person to consume about 75 packets of aspartame sweetener per day (or around nine 12-ounce cans of diet soda) to reach a limit considered safe by the FDA. Highly unlikely.

At Colorado University, research shows the popular sugar substitute and specialty food additive comes with serious downsides, impacting brain cells in numerous ways that can boost risk of stroke. 

“Our study adds to the evidence suggesting that non-nutritive sweeteners that have generally been purported to be safe, may not come without negative health consequences,” said senior author Christopher DeSouza, professor of integrative physiology and director of the Integrative Vascular Biology Lab.

First approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2001, erythritol is a sugar alcohol, often produced by fermenting corn, and found in hundreds of products made by different brands. Be sure to read the label. The first item on the ingredients’ list is the most used. Erythritol may be not far behind.

Erythritol has almost no calories, is about 80% as sweet as table sugar, and has slight impact on insulin levels, making it a favorite for people trying to lose weight, keep their blood sugar in check, or attempting to avoid too many carbohydrates.

Recent research has begun to shed light on its risks. One recent Cleveland Clinic study, involving 4,000 people in the U.S. and Europe, found that men and women with higher circulating levels of erythritol were mostly more likely to have a heart attack or stroke within the next three years.

Also, research has shown that as little as 30g of erythritol—about as much as you’d find in a pint of sugar-free ice cream—can also cause platelets, a component of the blood, to clump together, potentially forming clots leading to strokes.

To test impacts of erythritol on cells, researchers in the lab treated human cells that line blood vessels in the brain for three hours with about the same amount of erythritol contained in a typical sugar-free beverage. They observed that the treated cells were altered in numerous ways, involving “free radicals,” which are metabolic byproducts which can age, damage cells, and inflame tissue. 

Many researchers know that if your vessels are more constricted and your ability to break down blood clots is lowered, your risk of stroke goes up. Research demonstrates not only that but how erythritol has the potential to increase stroke risk.