Dubious research tied to Red Bull has shaped energy drink policy

I have always hated coffee so I've previously had some kind of energy drink in the morning for weeks at a time.

Those suckers are bizarrely addictive. It's one thing to have one shortly after you wake up, but I found myself craving them later and later in the day, and of course that makes it harder to sleep...which makes me more likely to have energy drinks the next day.

I stopped the daily consumption when I realized I was having around 800mg of caffeine a day, which couldn't possibly be good for me. I quit energy drinks cold turkey and just did Diet Coke, which I cut off at 2pm; even with that weening off I still got headaches and felt miserable for three days.

I will still occasionally consume an energy drink if I'm traveling and I need to wake up super early, but thankfully these are very outlier events.

Seems like a good a place as any to ask this - anyone else feel no effect from either coffee or energy drinks? I can go from 4-5 cups of coffee per day at work (coffee machine) to 0 cups in the weekend and feel no different. Had bouts of doing 4-6 red bulls (or similar energy drinks) per evening into the wee hours as a youngster and still fell asleep at the keyboard - felt no different than drinking water or lemonade.

Maybe related, I ran for an hour a day for a year but never came close to feeling anything like a "runner's high".

Anyone else have similar experiences?

Does this also apply to the non-alcoholic sparkling apple/grape/pear/...-juices mixed with vodka?

Vodka-Kidibul in Belgium is quite nice.

I don't know the brands in other parts of the world, but I see references to Welch in US...

When I look at the diving pictures, I don't think I ever dived from that height, for locations that were'nt regularly used for diving, this entails risk on its own.

Sometimes you see a bridge over a steep mini canyon and people diving.

If shortly before you dive, you see people diving (even if you never dived there before) it is much safer to dive there than if you don't see people diving, even if you have personally dived there before:

conditions under the water can change, submerged objects may have been thrown in locally, or rolled over a river bed from a different location, and if conditions under the water didn't change, the water level can simply lower and present new danger that way.

regardless of energy drinks, alcohol can obviously cloud your safety judgment.

I really don't know why people go so nuts over energy drinks. People casually chug coffee like crazy and then act like you're drinking nuclear waste when you drink a monster, and then you look at the ingredients list and it's like

- Water - Sugar - Vitamin B - Caffeine

and the caffeine is basically equivalent to one cup of coffee.

Opposition to energy drinks seems like a moral panic to me. Like I don't see anyone calling for bans on coffee and Irish coffee.

I never again want to work on a team full of people who drink a lot of energy drinks.

I'm not going to pretend I'm a saint and I only ever sip mineral water or kombucha (although I do like both), but that stuff sends people crazy in a long term way I've not seen before. I'd rather people were slightly tipsy after a lunch in the local pub than on that stuff.

there seems to be 3 different issues in this article:

- mixing alcohol and energy drinks (health-wise, e.g. arrhythmia)

- mixing alcohol and energy drinks (psychologically, e.g. increased risky behavior)

- age restriction on energy drinks to prevent kids from drinking them

i am not positive how i feel on the first two. i could be convinced that the third is reasonable for some age group, though i think it would be silly to ban it for all under-21s.

Not sure how things work on the backend but we're missing "alcohol" or "vodka" in the headline on HN, as it is on the page.

That's okay, I'll still keep drinking that garbage.

To all RB/Energy Drink consuments ... why do you drink RB instead of a good ol cup of coffee/tee? Please ... don't just write "it tastes good" ... no it don't. A strawberry or a cherry from the tree tastes good but not RB.

Everyone knows caffeine isn't that great for you, its already labeled and its not deceiving anyone and many abstain. What they should ban is Gatorade/Poweraid which is tricking everyone. Ask a nephrologist or cardiologist if they drink it! THE THIRST MUTILATOR!!!!!!!!!!!!

"The coroner wrote that Mitchell had drowned, likely due to an arrhythmia triggered by the combination of energy drinks and physical exercise. She noted that he had a blood-alcohol content of about 0.1%, slightly over the legal limit for driving."

That's a lot of alcohol. Where I live they'll for sure tear your license and sentence you to up to two years if you're caught behind the wheel at that level of intoxication.

As for so called energy drinks and alcohol, I'd bet taurine is much more important than caffeine.

> In England, an 18-year-old woman suffered three cardiac arrests after downing 10 Jägerbombs

I wonder if there was a pre-existing condition. And... three ???

She's fine now. Dancin on TikTok like everyone else

Feels like common sense to avoid energy drinks.

The best case is it does no harm.

Im definitely in the minority but there’s just zero value to me in drinking an energy drink. If you need energy that bad, there’s several options that are less artificial with similar effects.

I’ve tasted a Celsius here and there, don’t get me wrong. I get the appeal, but it’s just silly to not consider the health effects. I’m also anti-syrup and sodas so I’m a bit odd I guess.

It's not like health food research is the bastion of good practice, or even okayish practice.

Humans are by default irrational, especially when it comes to health theater. We waste endless resources with organic farming and trying to figure out what we even mean when we call something ultra processed, because we want to eat what feels right, and we don't care a smidgen how often data supports our intuition, we just care that on the off chance it does, we amplify that research while ignoring everything else. (See also: https://xkcd.com/882/)

It doesn't take a big corporate overlord to wish addictive substances were healthy; we're always looking for an excuse to rationalize them. So what if fresh grapes have all the antioxidants we can use, we like to drink wine so we're only going to talk about wine having antioxidants. Plus, it turns out that people with bad health stop drinking wine, so surely that's why they have bad health. Is coffee and tea messing up our sleep and destroying our teeth? Well, lets try and find something good about it, or some variation of it, and ignore the probability that other foods could give us the same benefits without the side effects.

This doesn't mean a well designed experiment, instead of a biased study or meta analysis, can't find useful information, but it does mean you'll need to dig to find it. It also doesn't mean that we have to be teetotalers to be healthy, but being addicted to something can make it more difficult.

I visited Finland about 20 years ago and Red Bull was illegal there, though I believe they've since allowed it.

When I see headlines and stories like this, a male voice with a Mid-Atlantic accent pipes up in my head: "9 out of 10 doctors recommend Pall Mall cigarettes - they help guard against throat scratch!"

I believe soda drinks are a big contributor to various cancers. Stop drinking it. It only gives advantages. There is zero absolutely zero positive thing about these extreme sugar drinks.

A strong indication of addiction is mental backflips to avoid discussing the problem.

The story seems to be grain alcohol is as healthy for the human body as rainwater or mother's milk, its only the evil mixer that is causing ALL the problems. The problem isn't getting drunk and going driving, or getting drunk and going swimming, its... the mixer. Uh huh.

The story and the moral panic over it is big alcoholic energy. Now go out and have the standard several daily servings of ethanol, as long as you stay away from those evil energy drinks I'm sure you'll be OK because they're the only problem WRT excessive alcohol consumption.

anyone in the thread old enough to remember when we trusted the tobacco industry to run its own studies on the safety of tobacco which found that tobacco was definitely safe, then later found that no one knows whether tobacco is safe or not so we can't regulate it until we're sure, then eventually found that the whole time everyone knew it was dangerous?

GEE GOLLY.

Energy drink company slyly changed energy drink policy! Hell, I figured the wall on the White House would be a ~~Brando~~ Red Bull logo, but even in Idiocracy, that president took advice from real experts.

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