These popular drinks can cause heart problems, mood disorder, psychosis, stroke, and death.
Energy drinks are popular fizzy drinks advertised as products to reduce mental fatigue, increase concentration, and improve endurance during exercise.
However, energy drinks are more likely to cause cardiovascular adverse effects, neurological issues, gastritis, psychiatric disorders, stroke, and death.
A report presented by Professor Milou-Daniel Drici at ESC Congress, points out that energy drinks can cause life threatening conditions such as irregular heartbeat, angina (chest pain caused by reduced blood flow to the heart muscles).
Professor Drici said:
“So-called ‘energy drinks’ are popular in dance clubs and during physical exercise, with people sometimes consuming a number of drinks one after the other.
This situation can lead to a number of between energy drinks and poor health including angina, cardiac arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat) and even sudden death.”
He added:
“Around 96% of these drinks contain caffeine, with a typical 0.25 litre can holding 2 espressos worth of caffeine.
Caffeine is one of the most potent agonists of the ryanodine receptors and leads to a massive release of calcium within cardiac cells.
This can cause arrhythmias, but also has effects on the heart’s abilities to contract and to use oxygen.
In addition, 52% of drinks contain taurine, 33% have glucuronolactone and two-thirds contain vitamins.”
According to a number of studies, energy drinks can cause all kinds of abnormal heart rhythms, including atrial fibrillation.
QT prolongation, myocardial infarction known as a heart attack, acute coronary vasospasm, sudden cardiac arrest and death have been seen among healthy people due to consuming high quantities of energy drinks.
Long-term consumption of energy drinks can cause changes in the heart muscle, a similar effect caused by alcoholic drinks.
Professor Drici and team looked at adverse events related to energy drinks reported by the French agency for food safety between 2009 and 2012.
Within this time 95 cases were related to cardiovascular symptoms, 74 psychiatric, 57 neurological, and 46 heart rhythm disorders.
Professor Drici said:
“We found that ‘caffeine syndrome’ was the most common problem.
It is characterised by a fast heart rate (called tachycardia), tremor, anxiety and headache.
Rare but severe adverse events were also associated with these drinks, such as sudden or unexplained death, arrhythmia and heart attack (myocardial infarction).
Our literature search confirmed that these conditions can be related to consumption of energy drinks.”
Another study has found that energy drinks can cause an abnormal heartbeat and increased blood pressure in young and healthy people within a few hours of drinking.
However, a dosage of caffeine under 400 milligrams should not cause any electrocardiographic changes.
Instead, they think the heart rhythm disturbances are caused by an ingredient or combination of ingredients in the energy drinks.
B-vitamins, amino acid taurine (an amino acid), and glucuronolactone (found in plant gums and connective tissues) are other ingredients commonly used in energy drinks.
The study was published in the journal Nutrients (Erdmann et al., 2021).
