Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Whether it's to fuel your late night study session, or trying to stay alert on the job, energy drinks are very popular, with 76% of young adults consuming them.

  • But what would happen if you ONLY drank energy drinks?

  • One sip and the feel-good effect is almost immediate.

  • When the sugar molecules hit your taste buds, it triggers your brain to release dopamine, the hormone responsible for feelings of happiness and well-being.

  • This makes sense, considering the sugar content of ONE can ranges from two teaspoons to a whopping 14 teaspoons per serving depending on the brand.

  • Within 10 minutes, both your heart rate and blood pressure increase in response to adrenaline release, caused by the introduction of caffeine into your body.

  • How much caffeine? As high as 242 mg per serving.

  • To compare, a serving of brewed coffee contains 95 to 165 mg of caffeine, brewed black tea contains 25 to 38 mg, and a bottle of Coke contains 34 mg of caffeine.

  • But unlike soda, coffee and tea, energy drinks add in guarana extract.

  • The guarana plant which is native to South America, produces seeds which are about the same size as a coffee bean, but yields twice the caffeine content.

  • Spread out over a day 400mg of caffeine appears to be safe, but having more than 200mg in a single sitting can lead to caffeine intoxication.

  • In 2011, it is estimated that nearly 20,000 visits to the emergency room in the United States were directly related to the effects of energy drink consumption.

  • Most of these visits involved those between the ages of 18 to 25, and the second largest age group being 26 to 39 years old.

  • So if you started subbing your 8 glasses of water for equivalent amounts of energy drinks, the constant increases in heart rate and blood pressure might lead to an increased risk of developing a bunch of cardiovascular conditions, including hypertension or high blood pressure.

  • An observational study reviewed 7 years of data from calls to the Australian poison information centre of the 297 calls analyzed the most common symptoms of caffeine toxicity included palpitations, agitation, tremor and gastrointestinal upset.

  • Twenty one cases had signs of serious cardiac or neurological toxicity, including hallucinations, seizures, arrhythmias or cardiac ischemia, and at least 128 subjects required hospitalization.

  • A cup of black coffee has fewer than 5 calories, but the high sugar content of energy drinks means a calorie count of about 850 calories in 8 cups of Red Bull.

  • This increases your risk for obesity and developing Type 2 diabetes.

  • But some of the risks are unpredictable, such as a 26 year old man who drank at least two cans of energy drinks daily for a decade.

  • With no prior significant health issues, he had a seizure and fell into a three day coma.

  • Doctors ultimately attributed this to chronic sleep deprivation and over-consumption of caffeine.

  • Overall, energy drinks are relatively safe for infrequent consumption, but you may not want to drink them on a regular basis.

  • Hey, we wanna send a huge shout-out and thank you to Sara from The Domestic Geek for narrating this episode while we were away, we're gonna put a link over to her channel which is awesome, you should check it out over there.

  • If you don't already know, we started our podcast called Sidenote, make sure you subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts.

  • We tell stories, we debate and then we splice all the interesting information and science throughout, we've almost broken up many times, because we choose subjects that we disagree on.

  • We disagree a lot though.

  • That's true, to the core we are very different people.

  • But it's fun.

  • It is fun.

  • And if you wanna find out about when we almost broke up, listen to the podcast Sidenote.

  • Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

  • And our podcast.

  • -Oh, yeah but... -Subscribe to two things.

  • Lots of things and we will see you next Thursday for a new video.

  • -See ya.-Peace.

Whether it's to fuel your late night study session, or trying to stay alert on the job, energy drinks are very popular, with 76% of young adults consuming them.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it