this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
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[–] bigbangdangler@reddthat.com 82 points 1 day ago (2 children)

“In this observational work, however, it appears that xylitol has a negative long-term effect on cardiovascular events in the general population. As with all observational studies, causalities are difficult to infer, but this work shows that further studies are mandated into this societally important topic.”

This is important, because the outcome of the study is: we need more studies. It is not that xylitol has been shown to be dangerous, a jump so many comments have made.

There was an observed effect in people who had "high blood levels of xylitol". But there were few if any other controls:

The researchers also highlighted that the association was independent of underlying factors such as body mass index, hypertension, diabetes and lipid levels, which might predispose people to low-calorie products.

It's been known for a while that extremely high levels of xylitol can act as a diuretic, but that's true of a lot of other things, too. That's also not relevant here. It's important to not jump to unwarranted conclusions until more proper studies are conducted.

[–] ericatty@infosec.pub 7 points 16 hours ago

How can you ignore diabetes and the other risk factors that lead to using sugar-free products and are huge risk factors in themselves?

At least exclude certain ones.

Plenty of people use xyitol products for other reasons. For instance, I just bought a pack of xylitol gum to carry because I won't be able to brush my teeth during the day. Gum with sugar makes my teeth feel worse.

Exclude smokers and people with uncontrolled diabetes and cholesterol at least.

Study the gym goers that want to eat their sugar as treats and use xylitol drinks or breath mints daily.

How much caffeine was in everyone's system? Alcohol? Were the other blood level markers in range?

With no controls, it could be anything. Maybe they were all covering cigarette and beer breath with mints when they had a cardiac event.

I hate studies like this.