How do they separate cases to get the research? I mean, isn't it more likely that overweight people consume more zero-calorie sweetener...
How do they conclude the increased clot production isn't just a variable of the study groups population? Like, how do they know that weight or lifestyle of the population studied is a lurking variable?
Because multiple colinear variables like that would make the confidence intervals blow up because not every person in the study is obese much less the same degree of obese, and adjusting for colinearity is a basic part of data modeling.
Just like how smokers may partake in worse health practices in general, but not every smoker does, and not every smoker is unhealthy to the same degree, thus you can find an effect across all smokers, like O2 deficiency, even a health nut smoker.
The design appears to be based on the notion that most of the confounders are washing out in the propensity to seek cardiac treatment, which was a precursor for recruitment into the study. I agree this doesn't mitigate all confounding concerns. Given the design where patients are measured at baseline and the endline event measure is measured later, I'd like to see a balance table at the baseline measures.
One possible pitch: I'm also not sure whether the circulating blood levels of this chemical are actually connected to consumption of the sweetener. You could imagine a world where two individuals who have identical consumption of the sweetener but different free-circulating levels of the chemical, the higher levels of the chemical could be an indication of other confounding health issues causing malabsorption.
I am not a biologist or doctor and don't know anything about sweeteners or any of the mechanisms that may or may not play a role here, just commenting on design.
>The design appears to be based on the notion that most of the confounders are washing out in the propensity to seek cardiac treatment, which was a precursor for recruitment into the study
What a bad assumption for a design. It should be obvious that there is still a relationship between lifestyle health and things like artificial sweetener intake even among that filtered group.
Nutritional studies are just all kinds of worthless when you try to use it for making actual decisions. They should be used to guide future and more detailled/well funded research, and that is literally the only thing they should be used for.
Follow-up studies looked specifically at erythritol (i.e. not a fishing expedition) and at-risk populations (i.e. it's not that people prone to cardiovascular disease are more likely to use the stuff). Still observational studies but enough to suggest caution in at-risk populations maybe.
> For people who are at risk for clotting, heart attack and stroke – like people with existing cardiac disease or people with diabetes – I think that there’s sufficient data here to say stay away from erythritol until more studies are done
Powerful conclusion. I would think most consumers of erythritol are at-risk people since they shouldn't do sugar.
Nah they cram zero calorie sweeteners in more and more foods these days just to fuck with the calorie totals and addictively of food without mentioning it blatantly.
Here's one example. Thomas, the english muffin brand, their completely plain whole wheat muffins with no marketing of of the sweeteners lists sucralose in it's ingredients. It made me go WTF.
Basically, don't trust processed foods at face value, shit, don't even trust restaurant foods because many of them just order from Sysco that offers them pre-made junk at wholesale prices.
I have neither cardiac disease nor diabetes and am at the lower end of a normal weight range, yet I'm at risk of stroke for other inherited reasons. I consume ungodly amounts of zero-calorie sweetener because I want to stay at my current weight despite my sweet tooth. This conclusion is distressing to say the least :(
And that CNN page semi-randomly embeds a video about an unrelated study that claimed to show an elevated risk of stroke in obese women who drank more than two diet sodas a day...
Still need more research, but if I suffered from cardiac problems or diabetes, I'd stay away from erythritol and other sugar alcohols for the time being.
What? I was on keto for months and consumed copious amounts of these. No spike for MONTHS on end. Does your statement come with qualifiers or is that just straight up misinformation?
There's a ton of BS out there on artificial sweeteners, so much so they are some of the most studied food supplements on the planet... but it doesn't stop the BS from spreading
How do they conclude the increased clot production isn't just a variable of the study groups population? Like, how do they know that weight or lifestyle of the population studied is a lurking variable?