Energized

Energy Drinks, the now over one billion dollar industry is booming from you paying around $2-3 a can for drinks such as Red Bull which gives you 2/3 the amount of liquid that the average can of Coke would give you for more than triple the price. Just think about that, less liquid and more money seems like a waste of money to me. Yet who would listen to me, I don't drink them, I don't know of the indulgence that they are right? Well you don't have to agree with me yet, but at least give me a chance to show you how bad these dangerous aluminum vials of supposedly energized liquid called energy drinks are for you.

Two of the main ingredients of some the top energy drinks such as Red Bull, Rock Star and Monster are Caffeine and glucuronolactone. Yeah I can't say glucuronolactone either but its bad for you. Just to show how bad glucuronolactone is Vietnam banned the stimulant when it was prescribed to depressed and stressed out soldiers and they started being diagnosed with migraines and brain tumors. To give you perspective on how much of this substance is in energy drinks, Red Bull for instance has 600 mg of this substance in it, that's 250 times more then a person's normal daily intake. Now let's not forget the drug that is in all these energy drinks.

Right now you're probably saying drug, I didn't know there was a drug in energy drinks. However it is quite the contrary the most common misconception of caffeine is that is not a drug, but in reality caffeine is a drug that has been proven to be fatal in certain cases involving high amounts of it. The drink Red Bull contains an overwhelming amount of caffeine totaling in 80 mg in an eight ounce can. Some people say well it's like drinking a Coke that also has caffeine in it, but what people may not know is that 80 mg the amount of caffeine in Red Bull is twice that of the amount in the average twelve ounce can of coke. Such a high amount of caffeine causes dehydration and increased blood pressure. They things have prompted certain countries such as Denmark, Malaysia, and France to ban the drink. Now if these countries are taking the time to ban Red Bull there is evidently something very wrong with it.

One would think that these energy drinks would offer hydration, but in reality it is quite the opposite. These energy drinks dehydrate the body and present a danger to active people. Anyone who uses energy drinks to quench their thirst or to mix them with liquor is putting themselves in great amount of danger. Certain doctors and medical experts say that energy drinks don't help an athlete perform and could actually affect an athlete's performance in a rather bad way. Maher Karam-Hage, medical director of the Chelsea Arbor Addiction Treatment Center at the University of Michigan has stated before that energy drinks can intensify the dehydration, thus forcing the muscles to work harder.

To show an example of energy drinks at their worst an 18 year old basketball player in Ireland drank three energy drinks before a tournament and during the tournament suddenly collapsed and died. Now I won't be the last to admit that there was no exact proof that the player's death was from the energy drinks, but one would wonder why out of the blue a perfectly healthy human being who was active and in shape could just unexpectedly die after drinking so much of these highly caffeinated drinks. What I am sure about is that you will never see me drinking energy drinks before a physical activity.

I have stated so much up to this point but one thing I haven't addressed is whether energy drinks actually give you energy or not. Mark Kantor, professor of family and consumer sciences and nutrition at the University of Maryland seems to confidently preach that energy drinks do not give you energy. Kantor states that "A nutritionist defines energy as calories and if you refer to energy as something that gives you pep, zip and stamina, that's just a myth. There's nothing that provides that in food." So as you start to reform or stand by your opinion on energy drinks think about a couple things, do these drinks actually give me energy, and if so, at what cost am I getting this extra energy.