Marathon runners have been using energy drinks for many years now, and the wisdom of using such energy stimulants has been the subject of a debate which we have watched rise and fall over the years. The recent death of a runner in the London Marathon, however, has brought the debate very much to the fore again, and has really put the question of whether or not energy stimulants are safe.
Claire Squires was just 30 years of age when she collapsed and died just a mile from the finish line of last spring’s London Marathon. Subsequent investigation revealed that she had been consuming an energy drink, known as Jack3d, from her water bottle. This drink, which is now banned, contained a stimulant called DMMA, that was advertised as boosting your energy, as well as raising your metabolism and helping you to concentrate. What was not advertised was the fact that DMMA had also been associated with several medical conditions, including hypertension, vomiting, stroke and even death.
Do Not Confuse Energy Drinks With Sports Drinks
Before considering energy stimulants further, it is important to just take a moment to distinguish between energy drinks and sports drinks.
Sports drinks are primarily designed to ensure that your body remains hydrated. They also provide you with sugar, to replace the sugar that your body converts into energy, and electrolytes, to replace potassium and salt lost during exercise.
By contrast, energy drinks are designed to provide you with a stimulant, or range of stimulants, to boost your energy levels very quickly, and to a significant degree. One very commonly used stimulant is caffeine, which appears in a large number of energy drinks, often in very high concentrations. For example, a standard cup of coffee contains about 100 milligrams of caffeine, while an energy drink of the same size will typically contain an average of over 300 milligrams of caffeine. In some cases, caffeine levels for a standard sized energy drink are as high as 500 milligrams. Drinking caffeine is such high quantities is well known to lead to caffeine intoxication.
Do Energy Stimulants Present A Health Risk?
In addition to caffeine, energy drinks typically contain a range of stimulants including such things as green tea, yerba mate, bitter orange, guarana and ginseng. Many of these stimulants are known to cause health problems when taken alone and, in combination, there is good evidence of several serious cardiovascular risks. The real problem here is that we simply do not know enough about these stimulants, when used together, to draw any definitive conclusions. Here though are just three of the more commonly recognized problems:
Drug Interactions
Many of us today routinely take medication for one condition or another, either prescribed by our doctor, or which we have simply purchased over-the-counter from our local chemist. In many cases energy drinks can interfere with the action of even quite common drugs, and serious drug interactions can result.
Antidepressants
Most of us would probably be very surprised by just how many people are taking antidepressants these days, and this often extends to people who are very active, including marathon runners. Many commonly prescribed antidepressants are know to interact with a wide range of other drugs, and serious interactions have also been reported with stimulants in energy drinks.
Blood Pressure
It is argued that more people today suffer from high blood pressure than from any other condition, and many thousands of people routinely take medication to lower their blood pressure. Stimulants within energy drinks, such as yohimbine, can literally counteract the effect of many blood pressure medicines, effectively putting you back in line for a stroke or heart attack.
Should The Law Not Protect Us from Such Dangerous Stimulants?
Perhaps not surprisingly the world’s most litigious country, the United States, has attempted to tackle this problem through the courts and, in 2008, three American states (Kentucky, Maine and Michigan) tried to introduce legislation to stop the sale of highly caffeinated drinks to minors. Although the manufacturers claim that their drinks are aimed at adults, and specifically young adults between the ages of 18 and 30, it is well known that energy drinks are also extremely popular with young teenagers. Unfortunately, on this occasion, the states failed to win their case and the drink’s manufacturers lived to fight another day.
The fight will however go on, as evidenced by people like Roland Griffiths, from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who continues to pressure America’s Food and Drug Administration to examine the question of legislation to restrict the sale of energy drinks.
As a race we have become obsessed with performance, and fortunes today are won and lost trying to improve performance in every sphere of or lives, including sport. Energy drinks are just one example of a multimillion pound industry that is profiting from our desire to run faster, but is the price we are being asked to pay too high? We must each answer this question for ourselves, but there is probably not much doubt about what Claire Squires’ family and friends would say.