Effects of energy drinks

Energy drinks are now available in Nigeria in multiples and have been so now for several years. They are often rich in stimulants or rather made up of stimulant drugs and caffeine and are marketed as food supplements that provide both mental and physical stimulation. There may not even be as much caffeine in each drink as is contained in the regular cups of coffee that we drink at home or even in the kolanuts many people consume at their leisure in many parts of the country.

The major drawback with these drinks however resides with the sheer amount of sweeteners contained in each one. That makes them easy to drink and many youngsters have been known to consume multiple helpings of the drink with fatal consequences. As a result, many young people now suffer from real health issues as a result of consuming these drinks and we shall be dealing with some of these problems in the next few paragraphs.

It is clear that because of what these drinks contain, their usage is associated with increased anxiety and headaches; and the more quantity of it that is consumed, the more severe the headaches. Sometimes, these headaches are caused by the effects of caffeine withdrawal. In large consumptions such as may be associated with binge drinking seen particularly among teenagers, panic attacks may even result as a manifestation of the increased level of anxiety. They also keep people awake a lot and when it now becomes a habit to consume these energy drinks, the users move from insomnia to a state in which they miss sleep altogether. This sad trajectory of events leads people to function poorly at work with associated impaired judgement. This combination of events makes the consumers of such drinks to become dangerous drivers and unreliable operators of machinery and indeed other types of engagement that require an acute level of concentration.

We have already stated above that these drinks are rich in sugars. The heavy intake of the drinks soon helps to wear out the pancreas, the organ responsible for producing insulin which helps to regulate glucose. The result is that they become prone to developing diabetes. Consequently, diabetics who take such a drink, and it is only the very ignorant people with the disease who do this, suffer a progressively worsening control of their blood sugar level and they soon develop complications.

Energy drinks can also be regarded as a drug of addiction. This is because some of the substances used in producing them contain caffeine. In some ways, there is often a near complete inability to function effectively in any capacity especially when there is no such drink available to the person to consume at the time of need. Faced with such imminent ruin, only a psychologist intervening in the individual’s preoccupation with such drinks can ultimately rescue them from impending doom. The misfortune is two-fold: there is the inability to be effective at work and the risk of financial hardship caused by an obsession with taking some products.

Recently, it has been observed that teenagers who are high on caffeine are more likely than not to take risks, engage in risky behaviour and are exposed to significant bodily harm as a result. In the meantime, such people are also more prone to suffering from jitteriness and undue nervousness. As seen in an earlier paragraph above, this particular dimension is just a shade lower in severity than the panic attacks which can result. Worse still is the fact that when too much of energy drinks are taken, vomiting may result, which can lead to the development of a dehydration state. There may also be some acid erosion of the teeth and oesophagus, the pathway for food from the mouth into the stomach.

It keeps getting worse because when there is much consumption of these drinks, a barrage of allergic reactions can result and these vary from itching around the body, similar to the type some people who take kolanuts have complained about, to the profound constriction of the airway that prevents them from breathing. When this nadir is reached, death can result from asphyxiation. Death can also result from the irregular heartbeats that have been associated with the use of energy drinks. People with underlying heart disease have sometimes developed cardiac arrest as a result of taking several of these drinks at a time. Some others have died because their heart developed a mind of its own, essentially beating without control and too ineffectively to pump out blood into their circulation. The result is that they die from a malady known as ventricular fibrillation.

Even when a person’s heart is regarded as healthy, the use of energy drinks is now known to cause more forceful contractions of the heart, a relationship that has even been observed among teenagers – the healthiest subset of the entire population. If they have been proven to be susceptible to such cardiovascular effects, then the rest of the population had better be aware that their usage can often place the risk of death at the door.

Another potent driver of the heart of the individual who takes energy drinks is the release of stress hormones such as adrenaline and nor-adrenaline. These further cause agitation in the individual, unduly increase the degree of nervous activity and accelerate the entire cardiovascular system to the degree that threatens the very life of the person. Those people who suffer from high blood pressure are at particular risk at this point from suffering a stroke or a heart attack either of which could be fatal or result in very debilitating illness.

In a recent study at the Mayo Clinic in the US, it was found that the use of energy drinks among teenagers increased their stress hormone levels by 74 per cent, nearly doubling their cardiovascular effect. For the person who already has a raised blood pressure and the one who has an underlying heart condition, such acceleration is a time bomb. Recently, the World Health Organisation released a warning which sought to address the dangers these drinks pose to young people, especially when they found that as much as 68 per cent of adolescents indeed consume them. Once more, a novel drink is now at risk of threatening the health of the world. Please beware.