Is Xylitol Really That Dangerous?
And guess what? It now causes stroke and heart attacks. You should remove it from everywhere in your household. Well, I'm going to tell you in this content that I don't think xylitol is as bad for you if you are using it for oral hygiene purposes. Now, if you're using it for consuming purposes like a sugar substitute, then yes, take these studies very seriously. So let's dive into the studies and see what they say.
Now, when you look at the studies, the important thing that I want to mention is actually the dosage of how much xylitol they are using on their patients. They refer to a xylitol-sweetened drink. After they consume that drink with xylitol, they then take the blood tests and see all of these negative effects occurring in one's body. So I wanted to know how much xylitol they used in their experiment, and I couldn't really find it in the abstract over here. I didn't want to pay the money either, so I looked at a similar study that they did on erythritol, and in that study, the dosage they used was 30 grams in their sweetened erythritol drink. So I'm just going to assume that they used around the same ballpark amount of 30 grams of xylitol for their xylitol study.
Now, how much xylitol do you use when you are using it for oral hygiene purposes? A single gum contains one gram of xylitol. The drink they are using in their studies contains 30 grams of xylitol. That is a magnitude of difference when it comes to the people who use xylitol as a sugar substitute versus people who use xylitol for oral hygiene purposes.
I think it's always extremely important to know the studies that are out there whenever we use something pretty experimental and new, like xylitol, for oral hygiene. I was extremely careful when I was using erythritol for oral hygiene, and I think the same scrutiny needs to be used for any product or chemical that we are using to enhance our daily life. Now, if a new study came out saying that just one gram of xylitol, a very small amount, would cause these same heart attack and stroke impacts on my body, I would stop using xylitol. That would be it. If studies say that, sadly enough, the thing that I found that works really well for my oral hygiene also is causing extreme bodily harm to me, yeah, I would stop it and hopefully find something else down the road.
But the thing is that these studies don't showcase that. They showcase that if you consume a large amount of xylitol, way more than what anyone would use for oral hygiene purposes, you then have these risks of heart attack and stroke. Now, if you are using xylitol for sugar substitute purposes in your baking, in your sweet drinks, in your cooking, and so on, then I would tell you to stop because the studies have shown that using a large amount of xylitol in your diet is not healthy and will cause these bad impacts on your body, like elevated risk of stroke and heart attack. Many things can be had in moderation if you just take care of the risk factors and make sure that the pros outweigh the cons. Right now, there are no studies that showcase that xylitol in small amounts has led to those big risks of heart attack and stroke. So I am going to continue using xylitol for my oral hygiene needs.