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Will Energy Drinks Rid Us Of Guys Like This?
Posted September 29, 2008 by Shakti Sombrero
These days if you're a teenager who doesn't drink energy drinks you're nobody (lame, square, etc). After all if you aren't rockin' a can of Rockstar or Monster in your hand, how are people supposed to know that you are in fact on the same coolness level as a real rock star and/or monster? This week's news that a scientist at John Hopkins wants warning labels on energy drinks will probably only make these jackass juices more popular because now when you slam a Red Bull, you're really living on the edge.
So are energy drinks dangerous? According to the article:
Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Hospitals University are requiring warning labels for popular energy drinks, which should inform consumers about their increased caffeine content and also the possible health risks coming with every sip of such drink including nervousness, anxiety, insomnia, rapid heartbeat and tremors.
...
The bad news is that more teenagers are consuming energy drinks posing their lives at high risk.
Ms. Boyd writes like a seven-year-old but she raises a scary point. In rare cases caffeine intoxication can lead to death. The median lethal dose of caffeine is about 150 - 200 mg per kg of body mass. For an adult the lethal dose would be about 80 to 100 cups of coffee in a limited time span.
But what about energy drinks? The article pegs them as being more dangerous than coffee, since their caffeine content is not regulated by the FDA. Here's a list from WebMD:
From this list only two energy drinks, "Fixx" and "Wired X505", have more caffeine than a serving of brewed coffee, and I've never heard of either of them. Even with Fixx you'd have to drink about 30 servings in a short time to reach the median lethal dose.
Bottom line: If you walk around drinking something called "Whoop Ass" you're probably a huge moron, but it's not going to kill you.
Posted in Health Scares, Media Panic
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