Well, oh, oh my gosh. I'm sorry thing to do is off. I need to stay awake
Fortunately I've got a nifty energy drink here. This is supposed to keep me awake according to the
Manufacturers it it gives me some kind of wings
Monstrous wings and look at all the great stuff. It's got in it. Let's hold this up here. It's got vitamins. It's got
L-carnitine
It's got taurine
Those are really really cool chemical names and well because they're so prominently listed on the can
these things
Absolutely must give you energy or else. They wouldn't list them, right?
Right well let's look at that shall we
Just because these things are listed on the label
People automatically assume that
Since they're mentioned these must be the things that give you the energy, but that's not really the truth
Remember that fella that made his fortune selling head on head on - apply directly to the forehead head on - apply directly to the forehead
Head on apply directly to the forehead apply directly to the forehead
It didn't do anything. He never claimed that it did anything all he did was
breathlessly tell you to apply it to your forehead and
people
Imagined that it had all sorts of health benefits. Oh some people said it cures headaches. It's good for migraines
It'll cure impotency. It'll cure the crop the dropsy
It'll cure leprosy who knows but just because you're supposed to apply it directly to your forehead it
Was good for you
or else they wouldn't mentioned it would they
Well, that's the same sort of marketing tactic that the makers of energy drinks use when they list all these
Immensely interesting chemical names here. Oh, they're long in there. They're chemically sounding
Let's go through the list shall we well the first thing on here is b. Vitamins it says B. Vitamins oak
Hey, well, there are four b. Vitamins that are listed riboflavin. That's Vitamin B2
niacin that's Vitamin B3
Vitamin B6 and Vitamin B12
Let's look at these guys. I happen to have
gotten some numbers off the National institutes of health website they have all sorts of
Tables and other sciency things there that they list the u.s.
rda that is recommended Daily allowance and the
tolerable upper intake
The upper Limit before they start harming you of a lot of different things
Well according to monster. It gives you 100 percent per serving of these things
Well, let's see the u.s. RDA of riboflavin. That's one point three milligrams. I see and it doesn't have and
Tolerable upper Limit nobody has ever studied it because it's never been a problem
Vitamin B12 the u.s. RDa is two point four milligrams
Also doesn't have a tolerable upper limit because as far as we know there isn't one these are b vitamins by the way
They're water-soluble chances are any excess is just gonna get washed out of your body
Vitamin B6 now that one does have a tolerable upper limit
It's us RDA is one point three milligrams
The tolerable upper limit though is one hundred milligrams
Now let's get to one of my favorites Vitamin B3 niacin
the u.s. RDA of Niacin is
16 Milligrams, and that's per serving oh, but look at this
servings per container
2
so I don't know anybody who's going to drink half the can and then put the rest in the
Refrigerator and drink it the next day
You grab this thing you down the whole thing so you actually are getting two servings
So you're getting 32 milligrams of Niacin?
Well guess what the tolerable upper intake?
level for Niacin is
35 milligrams for the average adult male it goes up and down depending on your age and your gender
but
Basically with one 16 ounce can of monster energy that I have here
You are getting very very close to what your body can safely tolerate for Niacin
if you have too much niacin they can have interesting effects according to the mayo clinic and
overdose of Niacin can cause skin flushing that's the big one it can cause
Rapid Heartbeat
And it can possibly cause liver damage, so you don't want to get too terribly much of that
however again, it's a B vitamin
Primarily small excesses are going to be flushed out of your body
Now let's go into these
Interesting chemically sounding names up here
We've got the L-carnitine and the taurine let's start with the taurine . Here's taurine
It's a fairly little molecule that
according to myth is
extracted from
Bull Semen well this story is bull. It is actually extracted from Bull Bile
It's found in very high concentrations in heart and muscle cells in the human body
So it naturally exists in ourselves. It's synthesized in the liver your body is loaded with it
there were studies that were done that tried to test the effect of a combination of taurine and
caffeine on performance and sleepiness
They had various results, but
Primarily what they discovered was that
Taurine plus caffeine had pretty close to the same effect as caffeine by itself
So the taurine really isn't doing an awful
Lot the one study that I found that concluded that taurine has a positive effect on
Alertness and wakefulness was sponsored by these people you guessed it the ones who want to give you wings?
speaking of bull
bile
No
There is no solid evidence that taurine does anything yes it occurs naturally in our bodies
Eating more of it doesn't really appear to do terribly much
Okay, how about this one? This is l-Carnitine?
L-Carnitine
also exists
Naturally in our muscles there are some reports that L-Carnitine
Is very very low in patients who exhibit fatigue?
And it's extremely low in patients who exhibit what we call chronic fatigue syndrome
The thought then is if you swallow a bunch of it you won't be fatigue
Actually that is true. That is one of the therapies they have for chronic fatigue syndrome
You have to take a gram of it twice a day
That's a thousand milligrams
For four to eight weeks before you start seeing an effect and even then all the literature says there is some effect
so
Swallowing however much they're going to put in this
Over an hour is not going to have any real effect on you
You're just going to have a stomach full of carnitine which will go away on its own after some time
there was a study done at the university of Maryland medical center to see if it had any effect on athletic performance and the
Results of that study can be summarized in one word
so apparently the taurine the b vitamins and the L carnitine which are so
prominently labeled on this can here
Really have no effect on your energy levels. They're not going to give you wings
They're not going to allow you to lift a car or whatever the commercials say you can do and they're not going to increase athletic
performance
But there's something in here. That's not listed on the label except it's buried way down in the ingredients list
That might be having an effect on your body, and that is this little molecule here
That's right. That's your friend and mine caffeine
Now caffeine is a molecule that all of us are familiar with we've seen it all over the place. It's in coffee
It's in chocolate
It's in a lot of cola products your average cup of coffee about 8 ounces worth is going to Contain Roughly
100 milligrams of caffeine
the us food and Drug administration
Has stated that
400 milligrams of caffeine per
Day is about as much as you want to get why is that?
Caffeine is a stimulant. It makes your
Central nervous system
Perk up you start to release adrenaline your heart starts to beat faster
You become more alert the more caffeine you get the more your body starts to get
Energized in a very very similar chemical cascade to what we call the fight-or-flight
response
now if you want to keep pumping caffeine into your body you're going to energize your body more and your body is an
Engine what happens when you rev an engine harder and harder relentlessly?
You keep pushing up the RPMs without stopping. What's that engine going to do?
Exactly now our pan of energy drink here contains about
160 Milligrams of caffeine
At one of those tiny little shots of 5-hour energy those little guys that actually contains
200 Milligrams of Caffeine I
did a little searching online and
looked up some numbers that had been published by the
nih on caffeine levels found in various food products
I was sort of surprised to find that Starbucks blonde roast coffee Big 20 ounce
Starbucks Blonde Roast Puffy contains
475 Milligrams of caffeine you're already above the
recommended daily intake of caffeine just with your morning blonde roast
now
Is this really a problem?
Well it can be because if that's the only caffeine you get during the day well alright
But there's caffeine and a lot of foods there's caffeine hidden in many places
And you may not realize that you're getting an overdose
Let's look at this poor young fellow
This is Davis Allen Cripe late of South Carolina
Young Mr.. Crepe according to his friends Drank a
McDonald's McCafe latte which has 178 milligrams of caffeine a
large Mountain Dew diet at 91 Milligrams
And an energy drink they didn't specify which if we assume as one of these that was
160 Milligrams which he chugged now that's total of
429 Milligrams
About a third of which he got all at once in a single
Bolus at the end of his two-hour stint of drinking these things the poor kid fell over dead
He was feeling light-headed he passed out according to the coroner his cause of death was cardiac arrest
Likely related to Heart arrhythmia. He had no heart condition
So it's a fairly good guess that all this excess caffeine
Basically drove his engine to wear out
This is not the only case I've got a whole list of them down here
They've been documented and you can find them if you do a search of the news
We have a youngster named Dustin hood who drank three 24 ounce monsters that is
720 milligrams of caffeine almost twice the U.S Safe recommended level then went to play some basketball
His heart was racing. He engaged in a physical activity that made his heart race even more and
He simply keeled over dead right there on the court in
Ireland in limerick there was youngster named Ross Cooney just 18 years old
He was said to have consumed four red bulls. That's a total of
450 milligrams of caffeine and then he also went out to shoot some hoops and
He also fell over dead
now people can
Take all sorts of meaning from this basketball is deadly no
admittedly this is a small sample size, but it is a
Brief illustration of the sort of thing that can happen when you charge your body too far
so
We now know that
What's probably giving you a lot of energy is not even listed on the label up here?
But there's one thing that is
In this can that is probably giving you the bulk of the jolt that you're supposed to get the bulk of the energy
comes from this dear old friend sugar
This stuff is loaded with sugar. It says here on the label that
one serving is
27 grams of Sugar well, let's see here. We have
27 grams of Sugar I measured this out for you. Every good chemist has a sensitive scale in his kitchen
And as you can see that's that's about two good heaping
tablespoons of sugar
And that's just in one serving
Oh, but wait, remember I said that this can contains two servings well
This is the contents of this can in terms of sugar
We've got a pretty hefty glob of
sugar here right now and
When you consider that sugar is?
energy it gets broken down into your body into
basically sparks of electricity you can see how much of that you're starting to get
Let's say you you didn't want to stop it at just one of these cans suppose
You drank one, and then a little while later. You said, I need more energy
So you drank a second one well in two cans of Monster energy 16-ounce
This is the amount of sugar you are dealing with
108 Grams
Can you imagine somebody handing this to you and saying here? Here's some sugar? It'll give you energy drink up. Oh
I don't think so
That's 16 ounce monster. What about the big?
24 ounce Monster monsters you want to drink two of those here is the volume of sugar you're gonna wind up consuming well
If you're a very active person and you're going to go out and run an Olympic decathlon
Well, maybe this isn't a problem for you, but most people out. There are not really
all that active
Let's look back at this
108 grams that we have here
That's the prop
420 calories
if you wanted to burn off that
420 calories, you would have to jog
Constantly for Roughly 4 and 1/2 miles if you don't
Your body is going to take that energy and store it, and how is it going to store it?
It's going to store it as fat
the volume of sugar in
Two of your 24 ounce monsters this is going to be the equivalent of about
1/4 pound of fat
so
What's happening when you drink your monster? Yes? You're getting sugar. Yes, you're getting caffeine
You're getting a lot of both. It's giving you energy, but
There's really safer ways to get that energy
Take a cup of coffee. That's a hundred milligrams of caffeine there
just put a couple of sugar packs in enough to make it sweet that is going to be enough to keep you awake, or
consider this
Why is it? You're so tired
Could it be that your body is trying to tell you it needs rest
Maybe you're not getting enough sleep
Yes, perhaps, you work a particular shift. You've got to be up you're an emergency responder, and you need that energy all right
For a quick burst of energy when it's really needed this material can be effective
But if you're going to start relying on it if you're going to start downing one or more of these
Every day or every other day
All it's going to do is make you think you've got lots of energy
you're going to run your body ragged and
eventually your body will simply give out and
quite frankly
I don't want to be reading your name in that long list of
people whose deaths have been attributed to
possible overdoses on Energy drinks