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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.'"
Here's a registration free link thanks to Google.
I think at some point its much healthier to switch to cocaine.
I put instant coffee in the microwave and went back in time.
Thanks Steve Wright..
While it's real great to be awake and theoretically able to do something productive until the wee hours of the night, there is no substitute for honest to goodness sleep. It's a lot cheaper than a $2 eight-ounce can, too.
Sleep when you can. You won't regret it.
Sigs are like bumper stickers.
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.
Whatever! You'd think the guy was smoking crystal meth or something. Anyway, if you want to feel healthy and alert, try:
(a) Eating nutritiously and sparingly,
(b) Exercising every day, and
(c) Sleeping regularly (same time every day) for 8 hours.
Hey, man - Caffeine may be bad for you, but it's sure as hell necessary for my survival. Which, in itself, may be bad for you...
Red Bull wasn't the first energy drink. Remember, Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine.
Bah. I can quit any time I want.
/usr/games/fortune
jolt cola was limited to 72mg dose of caffine per 12 oz soda do to food laws. (at least in the USA)
which ironicly is less then coffee can be (normally 65-175 mg per 8 oz serving) and less then espresso (100mg per 1.5-2oz)
http://www.freshcoffee.com/html/caffaq-1.html
these energy drinks are not "soda" to get around the limit.
LD50 for caffine is 150mg/kg
(take your weight in kg * 150mg of caffine = a dose that has a 50% chance of killing you)
200 pounds = 90.7 kilograms => 13.6 grams
100 pounds = 45.3 kilograms => 6.8 grams
um, I know this is kinda blasphemy here on slashdot, but my tip is actually to reduce your dose of caffeine. I used to drink *lots* of coffee and other caffeinated beverages earlier, but decided to try a little break and watch the difference. My conclusion is as follows (beware: these are my personal experiences, your might be completely different)
:P
1. If you are going to be doing a lot of intensive work, in need of intense concentration (such as coding), you shouldn`t pour down coffee like you never saw it before. The coffee dehydrates your body, leading to less-than-optimal body functionality and can actually make you less suited to do the job intented.
2. If you, as we all do once in a while, drink buckets of coffee - remember to drink lots of water or other beverage to compensate for the water loss brought on by the caffeine. It`s important to have enough water in your body, we're water creatures after all ^^.
but, who am I kidding - Coffee is G-O-D
Doolittle :
Bomb no.20 : To explode of course.
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."
Reminds me a lot of this (funnier!) column from Computer Language magazine.
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.
Why not get actual Caffeine or pure Guarana? Of course, I once saw a girl who ate roughly 1 gram of caffeen in a night stay up for 4 days straight while crying and dribbling at the mouth, so don't overdo it.
And as for straight coffee beans... Try instant. Just shovel a few spoonfuls into your mouth, and wash it down with water. 10 seconds and you're super caffinated.
Of course the other secret is to eat 20mg of caffeine immediately before falling asleep. You will awake totally refreshed in about two hours, as if you had a full night's sleep. You do have to make very sure you fall asleep before the caffeine kicks in, or you just won't sleep at all. Long-term effects include improved GPA and complete cardiopulmonary collapse.
The ______ Agenda
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
Caffeine is actually benefical, it can help reduce asthma attacks, it helps prevent stone formation, it can help reduce the risk of colon cancer and it's an anti-oxident. There are a lot of others which I won't post here, but a quick googling will turn them up, but sure, too much caffeine like anything is bad for you.
If you want to achieve the effects described in this article, why beat around the bush. Just get some cocaine. Compared to what these things cost, you might even be saving money.
But, for those who can't give up drinking their high.. there are new coca enhanced energy drinks coming out of Peru. Not coming into America any time soon, but still..
Quitting is easy. I've done it thousands of times.
What?
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.
I j-j-j-ust drank-k-k a-ll thirteeeen-n-n at once-ce-ce-ce aaaand-d let meeeee tell-l-l-l you I wouldn't-t-t-t recomend it!
*thud*
zosxavius photography
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"
Caffeine is a device that turns coders into caffiene joke posters on Slashdot.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Indeed, drinking too much water is toxic
Yes, but.....
From webmd.com:
You would need to chug down about three quarts of water or more all at once to come down with a case of true water intoxication. It does happen, but so rarely that I couldn't find statistics on the number of cases. These people become drowsy, lightheaded, and weak. They have trouble coordinating bodily movements and thinking straight, looking and feeling as if they just stumbled out of the local bar.
"If there's hope, it lies in the proles..."
Why do so few nerds smoke weed or coke
;)
Well, here in the netherlands there are a lot of geeks who do smoke weed, I'm one of them, if its nicely grown weed it gives me a focus on what I'm doing. I code very well when I smoked a nice joint. The problem is starting the work, but when finally started its like your in your own coding world and you can visualise the entire structure of the code, even better than when you are sober.
I've tried cocaine a few times and didn't really like that, MDMA was more fun but one should not do that often either. And these are party drugs, not drugs you take when your alone in front of your computer.
But then again I think that weed as a drug is less harmfule than alcohol for many reasons which I won't go into unasked.
The way to corrupt a youth is to teach him to hold in higher value them who think alike than those who think differently
Indeed. Most people don't realise it is actually physically addictive.
Adenosine is a chemical messenger that tells cells to slow down. Caffeine, being structurally similar, can block adenosine receptors in the brain, and thus prevent this slowdown.
However, your brain cells compensate to prolonged exposure by creating more and more adenosine receptors... meaning that you'll be really tired unless you block them with caffeine. Repeat ad addictum.
Check here and here for more info.
On a more personal note, I always find that drinking something with tons of sugars in it keeps me active far longer than caffeine alone. Caffeine just makes me burn through my energy reserves faster, resulting in me being even more tired after a while.
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.
--
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.
Maybe that is because guarana is caffeine? Actually, guarana (Paullinia cupana) is a plant, which according to Erowid contains 5% caffeine from which it derives its stimulant effects. There is no alternative to caffeine named guarana. Wikipedia's article on guarana has more information. Yet more misinformation from the Times.
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Caffeine is actually benefical, it can help reduce asthma attacks, it helps prevent stone formation...
Then maybe it's a good thing that Keith Richards didn't have these energy drinks available to him.