Drinking alcohol along with energy
drinks is a health danger.
Drinking alcohol along with energy drinks is a health danger.
Energy drinks are reaching their peak in popularity and continue
to sell mass quantities to their youthful target audience.
The most popular of the new wave of energy
drinks is Red Bull, the drink that promises to give its drinkers
wings. Venom, Adrenaline Rush, 180, ISO Sprint and Erektus
are the names of some the other popular energy drinks out
on the market.
These drinks claim to stimulate the mind
and body plus provide a boost of energy but can have adverse
effects when mixed with alcohol.
Lately college students and teens have been
mixing these energy drinks with alcohol as a means of getting
a high without getting sleepy.
Steve Clarke, director of the College Alcohol
Abuse Prevention Center, said students need to be careful
about mixing these energy drinks with alcohol.
Fatigue is the body's way of saying it's
had enough to drink and it's dangerous to continue to try
to fool your body that you're not as drunk as you really are,
he said.
"Even though (the energy drink) has
stimulants in it, the alcohol is still going to have similar
effects on you," Clarke said. "You may feel more
alert but actually the alcohol is having the same effect on
you. So you might perceive that you are less impaired when
in actuality you are not less impaired."
According to the Red Bull website there is
no indication that the drink has any negative effects related
to alcohol consumption including the elimination of ethanol.
However, Red Bull contains 80 mg of caffeine
per can.
High levels of caffeine can boost heart rate
and blood pressure, causing palpitations, according to National
Institute of Health. Mixing these drinks with alcohol further
increases the risk of heart rhythm problems.
"Energy drinks have a lot of stimulants
in them like ginseng and taurine,
while alcohol is a depressant so by mixing the two you're
sending mixed messages to your nervous system which can cause
cardiac related problems," Clarke said.
Clarke said the appeal behind mixing energy
drinks with alcohol is the promise of sustained rush that
would allow people to go on drinking longer into the night
and combat hangovers.
Alcohol makes people dehydrated, he said, which is one of
the reasons why people have hangovers, and the caffeine in
the energy drinks is a diuretic which also causes people to
lose water. So it makes the effects of dehydration worse.
"You might feel that you can party for
a long time, but in reality you are just going to have a greater
hangover effect the next day," Clarke said.
He also said students are increasing their
risk of having a bad reaction to the drinks by mixing them
with alcohol.
Students need to try these energy beverages
to see how body responds to them before consuming them with
alcohol, he said.
"You might have some pre-existing medical
condition or you might have an adverse reaction to some of
the stimulants that are in those drinks," Clarke said.
For those students who decide to mix alcohol
with energy drinks Clarke feels it's safest to limit your
consumption to one of these mixtures to lower any risk of
negative side effects.
He also said it would be more positive to
alternate non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverages because it
will keep you hydrated and decrease the negative effects of
alcohol.
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