Weightloss for Life

“Energy Drinks” — Are They Good or Bad for You?
Medical Community Concerns

How are they affecting our youth?
 

Anchor: New drinks called “energy boosters” have become a big hit in bars, dance clubs, and stores around the country. But there are some concerns, even in the medical community, about the claims and even the safety of these products. Here with a report is CBS medical expert, Dr. Lew Pincus.

Doctor: Many people are trying to “perk up” by reaching for canned drinks with names like Red Bull or Adrenaline Rush, or 180. But these so called “energy drinks” make claims that are not interpreted by critics in the same way they are by the companies who make the drinks.

“Energy drinks” usually contain vitamins, amino acids, large doses of sugar, and about as much caffeine as a cup of coffee.

But University of California sports nutritionist Liz Applegate maintains that the drinks are simply “caffeine in a can with a lot of sugar. “ While Red Bull’s website recommends their product as “an ideal energy drink prior to demanding activities, or in a performance drop during a game,” Applegate warns the drinks should not be consumed during exercise because the caffeine and high sugar concentration slows the body’s ability to absorb water.

The burst of energy comes primarily from caffeine, but energy drinks are also loaded with sugar. Sugar comes in the form of glucuronolactone, sucrose, and glucose. Some drinks also contain an extract from guarana seeds which works to stimulate the central nervous system in a fashion similar to the way caffeine stimulates the body. Guarana seeds also have thermogenic properties, which increase the body’s metabolism through the generation of heat.A soft drink usually has 19 to 25 grams of sugar in each eight-ounce serving. Energy drinks on average contain more than this. Red Bull, for example, contains 27 grams of sugar per serving of 250 milliliters (a little over eight ounces). This can be very dangerous, for an overload of sugar can lead to gastric emptying. The body becomes dehydrated, which prevents metabolized sugar from entering the bloodstream. This often results in nausea and vomiting. So when you are thirsty, think twice before grabbing an energy drink to rehydrate yourself.

A hundred thousand years ago, the choice was simple when it came to a drink – there was no choice. It was water or nothing.

What a different world we live in today. Diet soft drinks, ice teas, fruit juices, coolers… Every year, about 1,000 new beverages come onto the market, targeting our rising incomes and our innate fondness for anything sweet.

And they’re changing they way we get our nutrients. Over the past 20 years, we’ve added between 630 kilojoules (150 calories) and 1260 kilojoules (300 calories) to our daily diet – and half of this additional amount is from drinks. About 20 per cent of our total energy intake now comes from beverages.

Not only are they high in calories in themselves, but drinks don’t make us feel full the way food does; we keep consuming them and end up with a higher kilojoules intake overall.

Still, we have to drink or we’ll dehydrate and die. So what should we be drinking? Are all drinks bad for us? What’s safe and what isn’t? A panel of US researchers reviewed the available medical literature on drinks and health benefits (or harms) in an attempt to answer this question.

They looked at the energy intake, the nutrient content and any health benefits (or drawbacks) of a range of popular drinks and ranked them from best to worst. They published their findings in the latest American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

As a parent of two children my question about all the energy drinks has anyone looked at the effects of these drinks on our children. Every convenience store I’ve seen has a variety of energy drinks for sale and anyone who has money no matter what the age can purchase them. We see children of all ages downing can after can of them and pushing their energy cycle higher and higher. I have witnessed young soccer players just buzzing and talking a mile a minute from their recent consumption of multiple drinks. My brother in-law while on a school trip with his class had to have a nurse spend the night with one of the students who had been drinking these boosters all day and had completely overloaded her system.

One question I haven’t seen discussed is do we not have a natural energy cycle that ebb’s and flows throughout the day. Ask any working adult or someone on shift work and they can tell you about hitting the wall. Now most times we end up working our way through this period of low energy or perhaps we do have a coffee break. We look upon this as a natural way to rejuvenate ourselves but with the availability of all these drinks are we short cutting that natural cycle in our youths and over stimulating them.

I guess time will tell the long term effects on this incredibly young and over exposed youth. My concern is from a parent and health enthusiast is if we allow them to consume these types of drinks on a regular basis are we looking at a potential generation of lethargic adults who are going to be overly dependant on these drinks just to get through the dayExcerpt drawn from  Health Matters and Dr Lewis Pincus.