Ah the fashionable energetic drinks, they are advertised as been great, but do you know.....
August 27th 2007 08:09
What they contain ? Are they good for you?
Energy drinks like Red Bull, V Vitalize Energy Drink, .... etc and more are pretty popular among teenagers and young adults. The consumers of these drinks declare feeling full of energy after drinking them. Even if some scientists says that this may be partly psychological, the truth is that these drinks are loaded with caffeine, sugar and stimulants like ephedrine, Guarana, and ginseng. They sometimes contain three to four times as much caffeine as a regular soda, and some like Coca Cola already alarm the medical community.
The big problem with these kind of beverages is that the amount of caffeine contained in them is not always mentioned on the cans, so it makes it difficult to gauge how much you consume. Some contains as much caffeine as a cup of cofee but some have several times this amount. How much? We don’t really know. And as they are soft drinks, this amount is absorbed much more quickly than a cup of coffee or tea.
The people who are sensitive to caffeine, or have heart problems should definitely avoid these drinks. They could make you suffer from anxiety, palpitations, irritability, difficulty sleeping, and indigestion even with relatively small amounts of caffeine.
The bigger danger though, according to doctors and cardiologists is to mix them with alcohol. They think it may cause a racing heart beat, elevation of blood pressure and even potentially a heart attack. Plus, people who ingest a lot of caffeine, a stimulant, with a lot of alcohol, which is a tranquilizer, don't realize how drunk they really are. And then they may drink more alcohol than they would in normal circumstances.
As both energy drinks and alcohol are very dehydrating, your body is less able to metabolize alcohol which will increase its toxicity, and therefore the hangover resulting from it. Actually these drinks are forbidden in some countries in Europe because of their composition that doesn’t match regulations, especially for the caffeine rate which is too high.
But don’t confuse these energy drinks that shouldn’t be consumed while doing sports, with sports drinks like Gatorade, which are designed to help people stay hydrated during exercise.
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