by D. P. Noe

Created on: November 09, 2008   Last Updated: April 10, 2011

When you walk by the drink aisle of any grocery or drug store what do you see? There are shelves piled high with energy drinks. And then in between two aisles there are separate displays also piled high with energy drinks. They seem harmless enough, but are they? It seems that coffee and tea are not meeting our needs to get enough caffeine into our systems, and caffeine has been added to candies and gum and recently to the new market of energy drinks.

There are some of these energy drinks that contain more than 500 mg of caffeine and that is the equivalent of drinking 14 cans of coca cola. They can be very deceiving when you read the labels. For instance, a certain energy drink may say it has 80 mg of caffeine per serving. When you are adding up the caffeine total you need to remember that most energy drinks contain 2 or more servings per can so the actually amount of caffeine is doubled or tripled.

You need to understand how powerful these energy drinks really are. They have stimulating properties that will boost your heart rate and blood pressure. They can cause palpitations, cause dehydration and interfere with sleeping. Energy drinks should never be consumed with exercise because the combination of fluid loss from sweating and the diuretic effect from the energy drink can cause severe dehydration.

To add even more danger to the consumption of energy drinks there has been a practice recently of young adults and college students using a combination of energy drinks and alcohol. The danger is that the caffeine potentiates the effect of the alcohol. Alcohol is a natural sedative, and the effects of alcohol are masked by the excessive caffeine and sugar that is present in the energy drink.

The market for energy drinks is targeted at the younger generation. Children have easy access to these energy drinks. I would ask any parent would you give your child a strong cup of coffee? Did you know that some of these energy drinks contain up to 5 teaspoons of sugar per 250 ML. Also there is controversy about the effects of caffeine on the growing brain. Children should be guided by their parents not to consume these drinks.

When you examine the contents of the energy drinks there are several things present responsible for boosting energy levels:

TAURINE

This is an amino acid that occurs naturally in the human body. If you remember your biology, amino acids help to build protein. They are also useful to detoxify and cleanse your body of harmful substances. When you are

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