News

Energy Drinks: They’re Pretty Bad

Avatar photo

15 March 2016

By Alex Khalil

In case you hadn’t heard from The Mirror, a schoolgirl recently had ‘stroke-like symptoms’ after drinking two bottles of Emerge a day. In case you don’t know what Emerge looks like, here’s the bottle:

Energy-drink

They’re are sold for 50p at pretty much every corner shop and contain 150mg of caffeine per bottle.

Caitlin Fraser was hospitalized on the 10th of this month after her hands turned blue and she couldn’t move the right side of her body. The 13-year-old suffered from a rare hemiplegic migraine. Hemiplegic simply means paralysis on one side of the body, and can be brought on by a number of factors, including chemical stimulation. In this case, caffeine.

Caitlin said “The right side of my face dropped and I was wondering what was going on then two minutes later my full right side had dropped and I had no sensation down my right side. I was really scared, my friends then told the teacher who went and got a first aider and the school contacted my mum and dad and then phoned an ambulance.”

It’s not unheard of for children to be drinking things with high caffeine content, and various debates have been held as to whether there should be stricter management of them. It is difficult however, when you’re a child, to know your limits when it comes to caffeine, and as a former student, energy drinks are not to be consumed regularly. 

While they are cheap, water is cheaper, and if this wasn’t enough to get you to reconsider buying a four pack of Red Bull, consider this:

An average can of energy drink has around 115mg of caffeine. The average daily limit of caffeine for an adult should be no more than 400mg. Not only this, but many drinks can often have over 10g of sugar per 100ml. There are obvious health issues when it comes to consuming this much sugar, including respiration problems, headaches, and (it sounds stupid but yes, it’s important) rotting teeth.

Another point would be that it takes an average of eight to fourteen hours to completely get rid of caffeine from your system. So if you were to have an energy drink at four in the afternoon, that caffeine would still be working its way through your body by the time you fall asleep (if you could). Caffeine interrupts sleep, and makes it a nightmare (sleep pun) to get a good night’s kip. Trust us: sleep is important.

As well as sleep, caffeine can also affect your waking hours, too. Like any drug, caffeine has withdrawal symptoms. You’ll get headaches, stomach pains, and become increasingly grouchy throughout the day. And nothing is worse than being a salty sailor just because of a rock star craving. (And no, I don’t mean Dave Grohl.)

When it comes to children, these effects are tenfold. Simply because of the tolerance level a child has. So take 13-year-old Caitlin, for example. She had two bottles of Emerge every day while at school. So that’s 300mg of caffeine a day. While that may not sound like a lot, she did this every day, five times a week. Simple multiplication implies that, even after 1 week, she consumes over 1.5g of caffeine every five days. I’m surprised she slept at all.

Caitlin has, however, promised she won’t be touching the drinks any more, and for a good reason. While caffeine can help you out in a pinch, it’s more suitable to have water or juice regularly. But with energy drinks as cheap as 35p, it makes sense as to why children would buy them over something with actual health benefits.

Tom drinking coffee
When your essay is due the next morning.

Like this article? Please share!