"Are there Risks to Energy Drinks?"
The first energy drink dates back more than a half century:
"Dr. Enuf," launched in 1949.
Now there are more than 100 brands,
an industry now selling $50 billion of the stuff a year.
They're popular on military bases, but some military leaders
have questioned their safety, based on data like this: the skyrocketing number
of energy drink-related emergency room visits over recent years.
But if you look at some of the reports, you see cases like this:
24-year-old guy who didn't feel well after drinking a can of energy drink
and three bottles of vodka.
Because energy drinks are often co-consumed with other substances,
it's hard to tease out the culprit.
Same problem with population studies.
Sure, adolescents drinking energy drinks are at risk
of a wide range of negative outcomes,
but energy drink consumers are also more likely to drink soda
and have other unhealthy habits, more likely to binge drink,
take diet pills, and engage in other risky behaviors.
So the only way to tease out the energy drink component is to put it to the test.
One of the concerns that has been raised by public health advocates
in terms of potential negative effects is increased blood pressure.
But have people chug a can of Red Bull,
and 30 minutes later, no significant change in blood pressure.
OK, but that was the little 8-ounce can.
What about the 16-ounce big cans of Red Bull?
Forty minutes later, no significant change there either.
So concerns about energy drinks raising blood pressure
were dismissed as overblown until the bomb dropped in 2014.
Red Bull did indeed significantly raise blood pressure after all.
The reason the earlier studies missed it is because the spike
doesn't start peaking until like an hour after consumption.
So if you just look at like 30 minutes after consumption all seems fine,
but the worst is yet to come.
And the big shocker was that cerebral blood flow velocity—
blood flow in the brain—took a dive.
Energy drinks are promoted as having beneficial effects,
but this instead would suggest they're potentially harmful
because of the extra cardiac work load
and the decreased brain blood flow velocity.
Researchers subsequently looked at other brands.
Here's Rockstar brand energy drink,
significantly elevating blood pressure within just 30 minutes.
Yeah, but wait second, is it just the caffeine?
Is it any different than just drinking a cup of coffee?
To figure that out you'd have to compare the effects of an energy drink
with just a plain drink with the exact same amount of caffeine.
But there's never been such a study until now.
A randomized, double-blind, controlled, crossover study
in which young healthy volunteers were randomized to drink two large cans
of an energy drink or a control drink that had the sugar and the
same amount of caffeine, but none of the other proprietary blend ingredients
like taurine, carnitine, ginseng, guarana, and all the other stuff they add.
And it turns out it wasn't just the caffeine:
significantly higher blood pressure on the energy drink
than the exact same amount of caffeine in the control group.
What's this higher "QT interval" thing, though?
On an EKG it's the distance from the beginning of the downward Q wave
to the end of the bump of the T wave.
OK, so who cares?
QT prolongation—which is what the energy drink did, but not the caffeine—
is a recognized marker of increased risk of, oh...
fatal arrhythmias, fatal heart rhythms.
That doesn't sound good. OK, but by how much?
Prolongation of the QT interval by more than 60 milliseconds
is a marker for life- threatening arrhythmias.
And the energy drink only prolonged it by about 10.
But there have been drugs pulled from the market, profitable drugs,
bringing in billions of dollars because of a 5- to 10-millisecond prolongation.
So we really need to start investigating some of these
other ingredients in energy drinks.
For example, in 2008, authorities found cocaine in Red Bull drinks.
The Red Bull manufacturer insisted,
however, that they were just adding the coca leaf
for flavor and that all the active cocaine was removed.