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13 Energy Drinks In 3 Sessions
circletimessquare writes "As a member of the cult of caffeine, as I suspect many Slashdot readers are, I was pleasantly amused by this story in The New York Times entitled Opening 13 Cans of Whoop (reg req). Our brave reporter sucks down a number of energy drinks of various parentages and gives us the lowdown on their taste, appearance, ingredients, overall effect, and dubious appeal. Example: 'At this point, my energy level was not only elevated, it was speeding toward the red line. I felt myself staring holes through my computer screen, typing at five times my normal rate and thinking far too creatively about life questions like how many AA batteries I needed to buy when I went to the drug store. My mood was chipper. Too chipper.'"
Ritalin combined with caffine is by far the most productivity inspiring legal cocktail one can imagine.
Hey, don't say it like that. For food manufacturers to actually produce something that does what it claims really IS a discovery!
"Studies have shown that people who eat peanuts live longer than those who do not eat."
This is a 'Science' story???
The NYT article itself is a lark, and a poorly written one at that. As one who consumes espresso regularly and *energy drinks* occasionally, I can assert, experientially (corroborated by several friends & coworkers with whom I've discussed this in the past), that the defining active ingredient in Red Bull and its myriad spawn is Taurine, not Caffeine.
Conduct the experiment yourself: get a double espresso one night, followed the next night by an 8oz *energy drink* (adjust qtys. for your tolerance). Note the differing effects of the caffeinated espresso vs. the taurine+caffeine *energy drink*.
I spent a month of awful headaches giving up a 5-7 Dr. Peppers a day habit about 2 years ago due to acid reflux and stomach aches and found to my surpise that I'm actually more alert and energetic without the caffeine. Caffeine put me in a perpetual up and down mode, swinging between being too lethargic to work to having an extremely short attention span for the hour after drinking a soda. The only downside is that I still crave soda whenever someone pops the top on a can of soda.
I do cheat if I have a really bad headache or if I'm going on a long drive by drinking Adrenaline by Sobe and Amp by 7up. That always does the trick but with being unaccusomed to caffeine these energy drinks are like taking speed or something.
What's the most caffeine you've had, anyway? My above experience with SkyRocket spiking (plus spiked OJ and Coffee in the morning) resulted in about 1g (not mg, mind you) of caffeine intake over a period of about 6 hours. First time I've ever noticed my heartrate go up from caffeine. With my weigh of about 115 lbs, the LD-50 for me is around 7 grams.
(-:Stephonovich:-)
"Who needs reincarnation when we've got parallel universes?" -Me
would be a "scientific study" of the respective disolving powers of each drink. Since teeth vary, I guess we would initially need to establish,the parameters of the "average tooth" of the consumer in terms of its resistance to:
A: Carbonic acid
B: Phosphoric acid
C: Sodium Benzoate
D: Sugar activated plaque
E: Anything else in a drink including colours (colors), flavours, (flavors), preseratives etc.,
Once we establish the "average tooth", we need to obtain sufficient samples which are sufficiently similar in size, type and quality of dentyne layer.
Incidentally, we also ought to test fillings and see what happens to them. We could look for loosening due to tooth decay or the disolving of metal amalgum, (or whatever filler they use).
I'd be particularly interested in the gases liberated from metal fillings and glues/resins by the corrosive action of the acids.
While we are at it, IF these drinks are made from
domestic water, what effect does the fluoride have
on the tooth. Fluoride is added to water supplies so that poor unfortunate people who apparantly don't buy toothpaste don't have to worry about their teeth falling out.
Obituary: J Bloggs croaked on Friday due to liver failure as a result of Fluoride overdose. The Coroner did note however that the deceased had a lovely set of teeth.
While we are at it, where are MY RIGHTS? I didn't demand fluoride in the water. If you brush your teeth with toothpaste containing fluoride AND drink copious quantities of water containing Fluoride (BECAUSE SOME MF SOB DECIDED IT WAS IN YOUR BEST INTERESTS WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!) they can get stained black. Whoopee! Might as well issue black crayons. Why are polititians and tooth fairy campaigners so IGNORANT of long term health issues. They wouldn't have shares in fluoride mines perhaps now would they???!!!
Colours, sweeteners and preservatives are used to make products attractive to look at and cheap to produce. Medical help and therapy costs millions, maybe billions$. WHO PAYS IN THE END?
Sorry for the soapbox moment but some stuff has to be said.
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Although it is cheaper ($0.00 vs $2.00 = $2.00 cheaper, or #INF%), there is the flip side as well.
Not to denounce the fact that sleep is a Good Thing(tm), but...
Let's say that drinking the content of the $2 can allows you to stay up and awake, productive, etc. for 1 more hour.
At $40/hour pay, you just 'made' $38.
I know a few people who wouldn't mind making that trade-off if they could.
Actually, I find I am more effective at certain kinds of tasks (especially programming) if I attack them in long sessions. The longer I keep going, the more into the right mind set I get and the more productive I am. This is especially true for involved tasks that need a lot of separate considerations to be maintained.
For periods of up to about a week (and not _too_ often, I find it effective to stay awake through the night (so I end up working (with some breaks) from about 12 midday through to about 4 in the afternoon the next day), then relax and have a big long sleep.
Of course, everyones working habits are different...
Dan.
I once heard about this guy from a friend that works for Pepsi. he told me that this guy, a co-worker of his at one time, on a bet, drink six cans of Amp (or one of those similar kind) in just a few minutes (think chug).
He said within 15 minutes, they were rushing him to the emergency room cause his poor heart was thumping out over 250 beats per minute.
don't tell me that stuff doesn't have an effect.
"Before humanity, the stars shone throughout the heavens. After humanity [has gone], the stars will continue to shine"
It would be good to know exactly how much caffeine is actually in some of these drinks. I'd also like to see some taste panel results or surveys.
I've found that one or two of these will keep me from falling asleep after a three- or four-hour ride and a hot shower. I don't drink it before the ride, because keeping my heart rate under control is essential to maintaining speed on a long ride. Caffeine will give you tachycardia if you're pushing the edge of the anerobic threshhold.
Some of these drinks taste really foul. I've found that Red Bull does the job, but it doesn't taste very good. SoBe Adrenalin Rush tastes worse. KMX tastes ok, but doesn't have any kick, as far as I can tell. The best combination of taste and effect that I've found is AMP, but I'd like to hear some other opinions. The article was humorous, but it wasn't informative.
--
Yours seems a common work habit among programmers. It's just sort of taken for granted that that's how programming works. But it's one I've never been able to follow.
I always found that when working on a complex problem, sleep gives me a perspective that I just didn't have the night before. Coding for an hour in the morning, I can probably accomplish work that would have taken me three hours during the blurry zombie-like state that accompanies an all-nighter.
But then I also like sunlight...
Whatever happened to WhoopAss? It was the first "energy" drink I ever tried, and it tasted MUCH better than Red Bull. ThinkGeek doesn't carry it anymore, and it was the only place I ever saw it.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
I'd disagree with your characterization of hyponatremia as a problem with "elite" endurance athletes; in my experience, it's more of a problem with people who are, for example, first-time marathonners. These people think that they're supposed to down a cup of water every mile, don't eat anything else, and by the 20th mile or so they can't even walk straight because their sodium levels are so screwed up.
It's not a pretty problem.
Uh - you'll never see an LD50 for humans - just anecdotal figures on the lowest known lethal dose (LDlow I believe that is called).
To get LD50 you feed x mg of caffeine to 100 rats, and see how many die. Then you adjust up or down until you do it and get 50 of them to die - viola - the value of LD50. For some reason people have ethical problems with doing this with human test subjects...