Doctors issue urgent warning to anyone who drinks energy drinks
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in the US looked at the medical data of 144 patients who had survived a cardiac arrest following emergency treatment. Results found that seven of them, aged between 20 and 42, had consumed an energy drink some time before the life-threatening event, with six requiring electrical shock treatment and one needing manual resuscitation.
Peter Schwartz, of the Centre for Cardiac Arrhythmias of Genetic Origin and Laboratory of Cardiovascular Genetics, in Milan, Italy, wrote in an accompanying editorial: “Critics might say of these findings, ‘it’s just an association by chance’.
“We, as well as the Mayo Clinic group, are perfectly aware that there is no clear and definitive evidence that energy drinks indeed cause life-threatening arrhythmias and that more data are necessary, but we would be remiss if we were not sounding the alarm.”
Edit to add a link to the study ... https://www.heartrhythmjournal.com/article/S1547-5271(24)00189-9/fulltext
Does not sound that urgent to me after reading the article.
I have an urgent warning to anyone who plans on drinking an energy drink for the first time: they all taste awful.
So does coffee, really (imo). Until the taste is acquired.
Then it's habit forming.
That's why I stick to tea. Which most people think tastes good.
I certainly do not fall under most in this statement, you can miss me with that leaf water. Though I will admit 4 out if the 5 people in my house drink it which is why 2 entire cupboards in my house are filled with it in various boxes, tins, cakes, etc.
Just another BS article designed to get clicks.
7/144 = 4.9% With the information presented and using the same jump-to-conclusion analysis, energy drinks reduced the likelihood of a cardiac arrest by over 95%.
I winder how many of the 144 had brown hair. Let's guess 30%. The article could read, "People with brown hair have a 30% likelihood of cardiac arest. Why hair dye saves lives?"
It's poor reporting, but not necessarily poor research.
Out of the 144, how many of them were under 42 years old.
All we know from this article is that some number of 20-42 year olds had a cardiac arrest correlated with energy drinks. That age group is extremely young to have a cardiac arrest.
If the 7 they looked at were all otherwise healthy 20-42 year olds, that consumed high levels of energy drinks, then there might be more to the story. Especially if they didn't find any otherwise healthy 20-42 year olds that had a cardiac arrest and did not consume energy drinks.
Though with only the information in the article, we have no way to understand what is really being said.
Here's the study (it's free) ... https://www.heartrhythmjournal.com/article/S1547-5271(24)00189-9/fulltext
Gonna guess that energy drinks and similar products just make it a lot easier to exceed safe limits as compared to lower concentration sources like tea and espresso coffee.
A 16oz coffee has 150-300mg of caffeine depending on the variety; the eight o'clock coffee in my cupboard has 224mg in 16oz. The monster I just drank has 150mg in 16oz. Coffee is certainly not lower in concentration than an energy drink though tea is.
I was specific about espresso drinks for a reason!
The going measure for espresso is even higher though, generally around 80mg / 4oz demitass
Okay sure, but no one drinks espresso by the pint. Your typical Starbucks mocha/latte isn't going to be more caffeinated than the same volume of drip coffee.
Actually I need to correct, was pulling numbers from my head a decade + old when I did the barista thing, it's more like 80/shot at 1-1.5 oz
https://coffeeaffection.com/how-much-caffeine-in-espresso/
So in a regular size beverage yeah it nets out about on par with a regular drip, but it is a lot more condensed. Once decided to make a full mug of espresso, not a recommended idea...
I suppose I should correct myself as well, it's almost no one who drinks espresso by the pint.
There was a time a decade or so ago where a customer came in to the McDonald's I was working at at the time and ordered 11 shots of espresso put in one cup. I think that number is correct; the guy had figured out previously that's how much would fit in a large cup. It took an amusingly long time to make. They were in motorcycle gear, so I hope he was sipping on it on a long haul trip or something. Mercy to the man's kidneys.
... how many of the people who didn't survive a cardiac arrest had consumed an energy drink?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
Define "some time". Because if you mean "ever", this is worthless.
Fewer than 5% of this population of cardiac arrest survivors "had consumed an energy drink some time before" it happened, and therefore we sound the alarm about energy drinks, apparently.
Soooo... No science here. What's the "alarm" being raised then? What is the urgent warning based on?
Yes, we know they are bad. No, we will not stop drinking them.
Coca Cola was originally a health and energy drink and contains caffeine, as do about all colas today. Does that still count?
I don't give one shit about modern energy drinks, it's just shittier reinventions of an age old idea. Why people even would want to buy that overpriced heavily commercialized garbage IDK?
Fizzy drink make my head go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
A 12 oz can of coke has less caffine (at 34mg) that a cup of black tea (at 47). So I think the answer to your question is, no.
Would be more interesting to see if a connection exists between the growth of the energy drink industry and heart attacks or anything actually at all.
Today one could be forgiven for thinking that the massive energy drink company lobbyists descended on lemmy news to 'invalidate with zero proof' a simple warning put out by the Mayo Clinic and associates.
I mean nobody made a rule forbidding anyone from drinking the overpriced shite.