Years ago, the most unwholesome beverage a kid could buy at a convenience store counter was a sugar-laden can of Coke, and the only option available to sleep-deprived college students was an extra large cup of coffee. Now, coffee and Coke have to compete with something that combines exorbitant amounts of both sugar and caffeine: energy drinks. Teenagers and college students are increasingly attracted to these seemingly innocuous and well-advertised cans of energy, but few are aware of the health risks.
While one might argue that names like Full Throttle, No Fear, and Venom, are warning enough, many health experts would prefer an actual warning label to inform consumers of the beverages’ adverse effects. In addition to caffeine and sugar, energy drinks generally contain additives like taurine and carnitine that act as stimulants.
Energy drinks were originally marketed for high-performance athletes, but oozed into the mainstream population with the introduction of Red Bull in 1997. Energy drinks, however, are not your average sports drink. While sports drinks contain electrolytes (dissolved salts and minerals) that rehydrate your body, energy drinks often lead to extreme dehydration. Unlike sports drinks, energy drinks also create an artificial adrenaline rush, putting your mind and body into overdrive for an hour or so, but leaving you even more drained once the effects wear off. The adrenaline rush causes your blood sugar levels and your blood pressure to increase, forcing your heart of pump faster. Increased heart rate and abnormal heart rhythms are common side effects, although they tend to go unnoticed. This is the part you should be most worried about. Energy drinks disrupt the normal activity of your heart, often giving it more of a boost than it can handle.
Maybe you can justify this damage once in a while, when you need to sneak in an extra hour of late night studying or paper-writing. But energy drinks are not always being used to bolster our academic pursuits. Sometimes, we need them to bolster our social lives as well. Mixing energy drinks with alcohol at bars, clubs, and parties is beginning to become standard practice. Alcohol is a depressant, and mixing it with all that caffeine and sugar masks the drowsiness side effect. The problem is that mixing stimulants with a depressant will lead to a false sense of awareness and consciousness. You will think your judgment is sound and unimpaired, when, in fact, it is not.
Both caffeine and alcohol are diuretics, doubling the dehydration effect. Bringing alcohol into the picture also increases heart risks and the likelihood of abnormal cardiac rhythms. While it won’t kill you, it certainly won’t do you any good, and you’ll end up with a hangover twice as unmanageable the next morning.
I don’t mean to suggest that energy drinks need to be completely eliminated from the college diet, but they do need to be understood for what they are and used accordingly. While they won’t kill you, it is possible to abuse them, doing damage to your body. Drinking too many at once, or making energy drinks a daily habit is not the best decision—those sodas and coffees of yore may actually be the safer choice.
See how long Sadaf can last after she gulps down a Monster at squreshi@georgetownvoice.com.
