What's the deal with energy drinks?

want to caveat all this. I don't want to like sound like a Debbie Downer with how I talk about energy drinks. Um, I find them disgusting, like the taste or like the whole concept. The taste absolutely not for me. Like I don't even really drink soda ever. Oh yeah, it's like, you know, a couple of cokes a year, maybe in a couple of fan of oranges, maybe your

root beer like six or seven. I've talked about this before, so obviously if I'm not even in desoda really an energy drink flavor wise, it's just it's a lot for my tinder taste buds. But I'm also just not a caffeine hound. I don't. I don't uh, And I know a lot of people really maybe depend on this stuff or enjoy it and like to be uh energized in that way. But it's just not my style. I don't like the heart racing feeling. I don't like feeling ganked up. Um.

It's just not It's just not my personality. So if I do sound a little like energy drink, uh, you know, like a little thumbs downy, then that's kind of where that's coming from. It's just it's just not my bag. To each his own. Don't want to yuck someone's yum. Although we will get into the sort of the h whether or not they're good for you, obviously, but I just want to cavy up this episode with that. Yeah, we're not gonna let this one turned into the vaping episode.

How about that? I don't even remember what we said in that one. Oh we we pood pood every bit of it. Yah, didn't quite overtly. Yeah, it's kind of playing out though now right it is, because I can tell you just anecdotally, I'm seeing way more people smoking cigarettes these days than I did five ten years ago. People are going back to cigarettes or Yeah, that was

the whole problem with vaping. It was like people who had never smoked were like, Oh, vaping is good for you, I'll try that, and then they're like, well, I wonder what these cigarettes are like, and now they're hooked on cigarettes. Interesting, or the vapors were like, oh, it's not so awesome to just puff huge clouds of coconut pineapple flavored garbage chemistry.

It's grossed. Yeah. Alright, So energy drinks, right, yeah, I mean I bring up the vape episode not just because of that, but because energy drinks to kind of bear like a weird similarity to it. Like there's a lot of chemistry going on, there's a lot of unproven claims, and yet people are finitely into them. There's no denying it, and I won't yock anybody's on either. I don't really drink a much anymore, but I do enjoy when occasionally might have more to do than usual in a particular day. Right.

But but um, I'd say we start out with the history of energy drinks, which I mean, you can make a case that coca cola was an energy drink when it had cocaine in it. But energy drinks, as we understand them today actually start um background uh in Tennessee, of all places, right, this is in Johnson City, Tennessee. The first I don't know about the first, but it was well, it definitely wasn't the first, but it was a part of the early medicinal soda trends that was

going on back then, along with coke. And we're talking about dr enough E n U F which started in forty nine with it was basically like a soda but they had some potassium and some be vitamins thrown in and it it was and still is still around. It's hard to find, but you can find it here and there in certain southern states. Um, but it's not everywhere. Like I've never really seen it on shelves. I've never even heard of it really. Yeah, I haven't seen it

on shelves in Georgia. But um, I think it's marketed. It's sort of like one of those like old kind of tonic elixir sort of things got you, um the so Okay, so that's established as the beach had have possibly the first energy drink. Um. What what really kind of takes that that mantle and runs with it is something called LiPo itan D that's how I'm pronouncing great name for a market marketable drink doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, and yet it sounds like it would taste

really awful, and apparently it did. But it came out of Japan because back in the fifties when it came out, Japan was like super into working fourteen or sixteen hours during the day, eating standing up in in like five minutes, and then getting back to work like basically everything. Like if you ever saw um, what was that automaker movie with Michael Keaton Japanese? Yes, if you ever saw gung Hollo like that, that caricature of Japanese business. It's not

entirely just completely stereotypical. It's not based on just nothing, you know what I mean. Yeah, but this was in the fifties when meta amphetamines were uh pre nineteen fifty three in Japan at least uh were legal, and like there were all kinds of like fine upstanding citizens across the world eating uppers basically to get more done. And they, you know, like I said, they weren't illegal at the time.

I think there weren't people out there screaming about ill health effects, so all they knew was this was go juice, and I can get a lot more done. And they they certainly, at least in part, helped fuel that kind of nineteen fifties Japanese business work ethic. Yeah, it also helped jet kerouac on the road in like forty eight hours on a single long sheet of keeper as I understand. So, UM, the Japanese were into emped. I mean like most of

the world was at that time. UM. But then the Narcotics and Psychotropics Control Act was passed in that um in that country, and they said no more methem fed. It means everybody, you're getting out of hand. Um. And so the Taisho Pharmaceutical company said, we can't use speed anymore. But I suspect that people are gonna really want something that that makes them feel that way. So let's come up within a lixer. And that a lixor that they

came up with was lipovitan D. That's right. And it was initially um served as a pill that had something called taurian in it, which is derived from originally from ox bile. But they synthesized it, you know, a long long time ago. Uh, And we'll we'll talk about what that is more, but it's a key ingredient and modern

energy drinks. But they made that into a liquid. They served it in a little glass bottle called an ampuel, and it had a little membrane and you could stick a straw through it, and it became kind of the go to UH and it was small. It was sort of if you've ever seen a five hour energy uh, it was kind of that size. It looked like, Yeah, in Japan was like, this is great. I don't know why you took the pill and turned it into some disgusting tasting like liquid that we have to drink, but

we like it. Probably because it hit you a lot faster, That's what I'm guessing. And then there was a guy who was running that company at the time, the Taisho Pharmaceutical company that was making lip of it T and D, and he said, you know what, let's make this taste here, Let's add some flavoring, let's add more of like a soda feel to it. And that is when it really started to take off. And that is in nine two um what you would consider probably the first modern precursor

of a genuine energy drink as we'd recognize them today. Yeah. Um. A couple of decades went by, and then in nine five, Jolt Cola came along, which was invented by a gentleman named CJ. Rap Uh. It was highly marketed as a just a super caffeine eated cola. What was the slogan? It was like all the sugar twice the caffeine, that's right. Uh. And it had seventy two milligrams of caffeine and I think, uh didn't a coax somewhere between fifty and sixty? Wait,

how many milligrams are caffeine? A jolt had seventy two? Okay, all right, I thought you said seven for a second. No, seventy two, which is, you know, tend to twenty ish milligrams more than like an average soda, I think, which isn't like a ton. But at the time he called it, Joeld had the lightning bolt. And this was at a time in the mid eighties when less was more in like, you know, a fewer calories, fewer caffeine, like kind of less everything, And so it really swam against the current

as far as a kind of a marketing thing. Right. I used to love that stuff, and I don't know if you remember. But we mentioned it before on the show and they sent us some some Jolt ms good. I don't know if I ever even tried it, to be honest. Oh well, it tastes like cola that's super sweet and really gets you going. I mean it's still around, I think too, right, Yeah, I just I hadn't seen it in forever, so I was really happy that they

sent some. But eight four, if you jump back a year, is kind of when if you think about American style energy drinks, was the birth of that movement? Yeah, because I mean Joel Cole is like all in fun, it's about being hyper that kind of thing, but it's not like it's not like a drink that's designed to give you like a form of energy that you can be

productive with or increase your performance with. And that seems to be like the baseline point of energy drinks and that really finds well, I guess lip of it and d really fits that bill. But the one that we would recognize today that started in eighty four, um was found by a m a German toothpaste marketer named Dietrich Matta Shits, and he was hanging out in Thailand at the time. And he came across the tonic syrup called kretting. Dang. It wasn't it wasn't that Like my my context messed up?

Like I wish you could have seen my face, because I'll bet it was hilarious. Oh man, that was great that in there, that kretting dang dang? So what does that mean? Chuck? How about this? Why don't we take a break and we'll we'll talk about a cliffhanger and we'll tell you what that means right after this. How's your contact? It's fine, I've got this new thing where

I'm trying. So I've got, um what am I? I'm near sighted, so I can see things really well close up when I don't have contacts, and um and my my optometrists split the difference between you know, far sighted contacts and near sighted context so that I can generally see things close up and I can really see things far away. So I've got like two different powered contacts. And every once in a while, if like like the paper gets a little too close, it all just gets blurry.

That's what happened. Okay, full disclosure, everybody. It these are the details people want to hear. I don't know about that, but sure, all right. So where we left off, Wastrich Matta Shits was marketing for tooth Basse was hanging out in Thailand discovered the tonic strup called kretting dang and that was developed in mid the seventies. And if you want to translate that into English, that means what. No, I'd set you up for it. You take it. It

means red bull. Yeah, and you might say, okay, red bull. But where'd the red bull come from? Its origin stories even more complete than we've led on, because the red bull refers to Toren, which is again named after bulls. Taurusts is the bull and the reason why it seemed after bulls is because it was first extracted from ox bile,

which is awesome. Right. So if you ever heard kind of remember early on in Red Bulls life when people would kind of spread the urban legend that there was like bull urine and stuff like that in it and that's how it's derived. I remember that. Yeah, I totally do. None. Obviously none of that is true. It may have had something to do with the ox file uh original, Yeah, I'm guess thing so, and the fact that there was trace amounts of bull seamen in there. No, just not

bull yeurine. That's crazy. But like we said that that had been synthesized for decades, so it's not like they were using real ox spile anyway, right exactly. So Um Dietrich Mattashits who he went from marketing blend Ax toothpaste to um taking this tonic, the Red Bull tonic, kretang dang, kretting dang. I just can't quite get it, um, and he he said, I want to do something with this. I think people are going to go crazy for this.

So he got his hands on a license. He spent three years like turning it into a carbonated beverage rather than just a tonic syrup, messed with the taste, came up with a great marketing plan and launched it in nineteen seven in um, Austria and Germany to to great success. Yeah, he sold a lot of it and early just kind of from the beginning, Red Bull had a very guerrilla style marketing thing as far as those cars that you see that are that are I don't say wrapped in

Red Bull ads and I have a can on them. Yeah, like Red Bull parties and stuff like that. Uh, they had animated TV commercials over there that were really catchy, and it really caught on not only there, but obviously worked its way through Europe eventually found its way to the US, where it became um tied to car racing and extreme sports and uh, you and I even did that. Uh was it like a soapbox derby? Soapbox derby where we were called upon to judge the soapbux derby? Who

was it? Was it, young Jock? I think so it was. There was a rapper that was with us, and like a couple other people. Guy, Oh it was great. Um, I don't remember who else was up there, but yeah, it was. That was a weird thing. But that was a red Bull event and they sponsored a lot of those kind of things, and that was you know, they were marketing to younger people who you know, red Bull gives you wings and uh, it's sort of like the extreme sports angle. They sponsored. That jump, the highest jump

from the stratosphere ever ever done by man. I can't remember the guys. They want to say, Casper or something. Do you remember that, Casper Weinberger. No, No, you never jumped out of an orbiting satellite like this guy did, right, right right, Oh yeah, I remember that. Yeah, so that that was a red Bull sponsored thing. That's definitely like

up there alley for sure. It's so interesting advertising that if like, oh, you're gonna anything where people have eyeballs on it, They're like, well, can we put our logo on your chest? I guess it makes sense. I mean, that's I don't know it does. It's like that guy who the airline pilot who landed the plane safely in

the Hudson and no one died, like a few years back. No, he wasn't sponsored, but he took that he took that spotlight and he used it to UM to basically share with the public the plight of like UM airline pilots and how they're like mistreated UM. And it's the same thing. It's like a bunch of people are paying attention to you all of a sudden. Are you gonna say, I'm sponsored by Red Bull or my uh colleagues are really being mistreated by the airline companies. Let's let's do something

about it, right. And I'm not poo pooing it, obviously. The irony is not lost on me. I know. That's how we make our livings. So please Savior emails. We're always walking around with Red Bull jackets on the leather eight ball red Bull jackets that were contractually obligated to wear. But Red Bull was a pretty big success right away held a lot of the market, like the lion share of the market share early on in the early two thousand's, I think seventy nine uh in two thousand one of

the market share. And obviously when something is selling one and a half plus billion cans of something a year, people are gonna jump on board. And then you've got one to three basically four other are really big players who have stuck around. Yeah, Monster, which is a a juggernaut. It was actually launched by you know that Hansen soda, the all natural soda. I don't think I do. You've seen it if you've ever been to a decent deli before.

They had Hanson soda along with New York Seltzer and stuff, and it's just like little little soda brand that just keeps plugging along. But it's it's like touts that it's made of like natural like ingredients. They launched Monster and they went from in two thousand three a company with fifty million dollars in revenue. They launched Monster Energy Drink that year, and eight years later they were making one point seven billion dollars in revenue. Wo. Yeah, yeah, they

have about a third of today's market. Uh, there's n os which I see those signs all over convenience stores. But honestly, I never really paid attention enough to know what it was. But that is an energy drink. It was launched in two thousand five by f u Ze Fuse, which was bought by Coke. Uh and I think Monster owns them now as well. Right, yeah, so they owned the number two and number three most I guess best selling energy drinks. I've also seen it pronounced nass it

probably is, yeah, but a little I know about car racing. Well, I had to look up a video where somebody reviewed it to make sure that's how you say it, So I'm with you, but it's um. It's it's like a nitrous oxide booster, like that part in Black Sheet when Chris Farley and David Spade are driving the stolen police car and they're tailed by real police and he pushes the nitrous oxide button. It just takes off because it injects a bunch of combustion into it and really gets

it going. That's basically the premise of this energy drink. Still haven't seen that movie. It's okay, it's pretty good, all right. Uh. Then you've got, of course rock Star that was launched in oh one, that is owned by Pepsi. And you know, you see a trend here with any beverage, any beer. If you're some kind of cool small brand that's selling a lot of stuff, one of the big dogs will come along and gobble you up pretty pretty quickly. And I think that's the goal for a lot of

these companies. It's like, you know, a big payday. Apparently rock Star is kind of going down in the market, right, yeah, yeah, year by year. Apparently it's it's a discount um uh energy drink. It's about half the price of Monster. But they have a very limited amount of flavors, and I think that's the way you make money in that biz, is like having fifty million flavors, half the price, half the flavor, right. That's their logo that that used to

be mine. I used to like rock Star a lot, and it was like it just wasn't nearly as like noxious as some of the other ones are. But yeah, it's it's fine. Uh, and then you've got you can't beat the price, then you got your five hour energy. That's the one I mentioned earlier. You will see these little guys. It's like a shot basically by UM the

cash register area because they're not refrigerated. Uh. They were launched in two thousand four by Living Essentials, and this was kind of harkens back a little more to those Asian elixir tonics that were sold in the early days in the sixties, right. And one reason that the big guys, the big players in the soda market started buying up energy drinks smaller companies is because their own attempts at

them were almost across the board failures. UH. Coke Energy was probably the longest lasting one, and they just announced they think this past year that they were going to stop making it. Heard of it, you could have very easily looked past. It was like a thin can that they If you weren't looking for an energy drink, you you could have gone your whole life without knowing the existed UM vault, which was I was sad to UM to see that go. I used to love that stuff.

But it was a little more along the lines of like jolts vibe than like an energy drink vibe. Do you remember that stuff that used to fuel me in the early days of recording? Yeah, okay, I don't remember Pepsi's Josta. Never heard of that me either, Uh. And I don't remember Nelly the rapper Nelly had pimp juice never. I don't remember that. No. And I mean, there's plenty of others to chuck there's more than you can shake

a stick at. Apparently in two thousand and six and two thousand and seven, two hundred new brands were introduced, and you've got just there's tons of different brands, and some of them are kind of like UM still tapping into that early like extreme vibe, Like there's one called Redline Extreme. Uh. Then the others are like kind of like going after niche markets once called Nerd Focus, and then Sunny D has gotten into it with their rise R Y s e Um Energy Drink. I can't believe

there's not a Z in that. There's not. I think they were satisfied with the Y and like you can't bastardize two letters exactly. They're like, we're sunny D, we can only go so far. And then also there's Bang. I think there's people who are energy drink fans who are screaming at us right now. You can't not mention Bang at least if we're gonna buzz market all these guys. Sure, what about muscle buzz that's a good one. Is that for real? Or you make them out up? Made it up?

Because I could see it both ways. No, it totally could be a real thing. Uh No, I'm sure there are still smaller brands out there, Like you said that, they have their like loyalists, But whenever you're talking about something like this, it seems to boil down to like four or five kind of of the big big boys. UM and big boys is right because I think a couple of years ago the global market was about forty five billion dollars total UM. And this is uh. Ed

Grabanowski helped us out with this one. He does point out that, UM, Like, statistically, if you look at like the Wall Street Journal, they'll talk about Europe and Russia and North America. But those are just because they're traded publicly. UM. I'm sure that in in Asia they still have some of the UM hot selling smaller tonics that just aren't you know, publicly listed like that, right, at least not on the New York Stock Exchange. So so you said

in was right? Yeah, I saw predicted by twenty thirty one, less than a decade from now, it'll reach a hundred and eight billion dollars and that will go toward nerd focus. That's my prediction. Uh. We should talk about what's in these things, right, Yeah? Um, first and foremost chok is sugar. Sugar. Sugar. Yeah, they're very sweet, and that's probably why like I like sugar. I like, you know, ice cream and desserts and things. But yeah, just get a bag down from the counter.

And I don't love sugary, really sugary drinks though, as evidenced by my lack of cola consumption. I think that may be one of my biggest turnoffs out of the gate, is just how sweet they are. Yeah, man, you're really doing yourself a favor by avoiding that stuff. I mean, I already have a weight problem. Can you imagine if I drank like six or eight so does a day. That's I mean, that wouldn't be around. That's the easiest way to drop a bunch of weight. If that's what

you're looking for. Is dropping like soda and apparently also, um this is I can't back this up with any study, but anecdotally speaking, um h zero sugar or diet is is just as bad, if not worse somehow that we don't fully understand yet. Yeah, Emily used to be a diet coke fiend and totally gave it up, probably I don't know, six or eight years ago and noticed a big difference in her life. You know, Yeah, I believe it. Uh So, sugar wise is sixteen ounce uh energy drink

has about fifty to sixty grams of sugar. It's a lot. That is a lot. If you look at the same size coke has about thirty nine. So this is you know, upwards of twenty plus grams of sugar, more than in a coat. Yeah, so it's they're very sweet. What's interesting is like the I guess the taste of them. Some

of them you're like, this is really sweet. But like Red Bull, for example, has a ton of sugar in it, but that's not the thing that you notice that, that's not the chief part of like the taste or the mouth feel. It's something different. But there's a ton of sugar in there, and sugar. The reason why there's a lot of sugar in there is because you know, carbohydrates,

like sugar, they're easily broken down. Do provide you energy, that's one of the things that they do, and so energy drinks have said, well, we'll just put a ton of sugar in here to start. Yeah, And honestly, Red Bull is the only one I've ever even tasted, and as soon as it did, I was like, this is not for me. So I've never even had any of the other ones. The other ones can be really sweet and not real Red Bull at all. Yeah. Caffeine is

the next huge ingredient. Um. Obviously, all of these are gonna have of at least a hundred and fifty grams of caffeine, which sounds like a lot, and it is. But I think, I mean, how much is a is a like a large coffee has usually more than three hundred, right, not a large chuck? A grande has three? Ten? Is grande the larger the medium? It's the medium. Yeah, there's

tall Grande INVENTI big big one. But yeah, so it's like, you know, of course coffee has a bunch in it, but uh, sixteen out soda has like fifty to sixty grams of it, right, and some of these, you know, a hundred and sixty is a good average from what I saw, a hundred and sixty grams of caffeine and like a sixteen ounce like one of those tall Boy cans of an energy drink. So there's a lot more than there is in soda, but not quite as much

in coffee. The thing is, some of those energy drinks do go up to like three hundred, Like I know Bang has three hundred grams of caffeine in it, so basically double the average um caffeine that you'll find in other um energy drinks. And that's just the listed stuff. As we'll see, there are, from what I can tell, depending on what it's regulated as no requirements for listing

how much caffeine is in it. And if they are required to list how much caffeine is in it, they only have to put the amount of caffeine that they're actually putting it, like caffeine powder that was synthesized in a lab that they put into their drink. That's the only stuff that they would need to list, and there are there's a lot of other caffeine sources in it. I just don't see how that could still be possible because the f d A is just totally owned by

everybody but the American people. That's why it's it's just sad. And we've done episodes on that it does the FDA protect Americans. The really eye opening one we did on supplements. Remember, like the U an energy drink can be regulated as a beverage of food item or as a supplement like a vitamin, and the food I them is more regulated than the supplement is. And that's just that's just classic f d A. Yeah, and I'm not even saying, like a government you should put a cap on things, uh,

but it's it's just hard to believe. They don't even have to list what is in these things, uh right. It is very hard, especially when you start, you know, really kind of digging into how much stuff is in these things, and that we don't fully understand how some of these things actually affect us, especially over the long term.

And again, some people drink three four five energy drinks a day every day and have for years, So really anything we should be studying those people, like a gaggle of scientists should be following them around just taking notes, like every day on them. Yeah, put on your uh speed skates exactly. Rocket skates is more like it. Am. Yeah, we tried to follow them around, but we couldn't catch up. We're on too much sunny d rise. Taurine, of course, is still in there. Like we mentioned, Um, how much

do you want to get into two taurin? I'd like to talk about it a little bit, all right, hit it go ahead. Uh. Well, like we said, we've been synthesizing it from the the ox spile for many years now. Um. Human beings can actually synthesize it to some degree. Right, Yeah, so it's not it's it's not an essential nutrient force, but we do need more, I think than we produce, so we get it from other sources like meat and

fish and stuff like that. And the synthesized version of it like that you would take as a supplement, has been used in Japan. They treat it, use it to treat congenital heart disease UM. They've shown that it treats metabolic diseases, inflammatory diseases like arthritis UM. And it does have an effect on human performance, like endurance of elite athletes give and touring show like a difference in how well they perform. Yes, Like you can take supplements of it.

And there's usually about two thousand milligrams of touring in an energy drink, and that is a high dose of touring. And we do know from study that touring does have generally positive effects on humans. But again it's a really high dose and we don't know how much. You know, a dose like that multiple times a day, every day will affect you. Yeah, and then how it interacts with caffeine and sugar and all the other things right right exactly, because that's the point of an energy drink. All this

stuff taken separately can affect you. We don't really understand how they interact and work together to affect you. That's the big, the big question mark. Yeah. Um B vitamins are still in a lot of these energy drinks, just like they were with that initial uh initial Japanese elixir.

Um B vitamins are are you know, can be really good for your body for sure, um, but we again combine with all the sugar, um, we don't know like what kind of effect uh A lot of the kind of remaining ingredients, We don't know what kind of effect it might have when it comes to like gen seng and antioxidants and b vitamins and things that they kind of tout as being, you know, good for you. We don't know what kind of effect they have in an energy drink. Um. There's another one that that is pretty

much in every single energy drink you'll ever find. It's called guarana and guarana I do want to talk a little bit more about to chuck. So it's a climbing plant native to the Amazon, right. It's a traditional medicine there and it's been used to treat things like fatigue depression. Like it is a a an active um molecule that

like affects human beings. And one of the things that it does to affect us is has like four times the caffeine that coffee beans do, and it also acts as somehow there's some other part of it that act is a booster to that caffeine. So like some component of guarana um interacts with the caffeine in it to boost it and then would also ostensibly interact with all the other caffeine that you find floating around in an

energy drink. So it actually is boosting properties and more to the point that three hundred or hundred and sixty grams of caffeine that's listed on the label. That doesn't include the guarana, which again has four times the caffeine of coffee beans. So you really have zero idea how much caffeine you're ingesting um, whether higher or lower um

according to the label. Um, because of things like that, because it's considered an herbal supplement, and you don't have to list a darn thing that's associated with that herbal supplement in the United States, that's right. So that was one of the sort of well not mystery additions, but just one of the extra caffeine additions. Yeah, and again it really does have an effect on us. We just aren't haven't studied it closely enough to know to dick stuff.

All right, another break, Yes, I'm ready for one. All right, Well, uh, we've kind of been hinting around at this, but we'll talk about whether or not the energy drinks are actually bad for you or even dangerous right after this, all right, chuck, So energy drinks bad for you? Go, Well, here's the deal.

After researching this stuff, A couple of things are clear. Um. One is kind of like with most things, if you have the occasional energy drink and it's something that you've have in moderation, it's it's probably not terrible for you. It is got a ton of sugar in a ton of caffeine. So uh, just like any other sugary sodas or or loads of caffeine, you know. Um, all that stuff in moderation is probably okay. Um. We're not doctors.

So if if you have like a heart condition or super high blood pressure or like you know, arrhythmias and things like that, and you you want to drink a lot of energy drinks, like you may want to talk to your doctor and say, hey, is this a bad idea? Because there have been and this you know, we want to point out this doesn't mean that, uh, this is

an open and shut deal. But there have been a lot of lawsuits brought against energy drink companies because of health problems that people have had that they at least claim, um stem uh, And I think they think it stems from energy drinks. But I think what we can probably say is and what the defendant will say, which is to say these big companies is hey, you can't draw a straight line from your stroke to my energy drink. It's like there's a lot of factors going on with

your life, right, um. But I don't know if any of these has been settled in I haven't heard, but that the lawsuits definitely say like, hey, this my kid was totally fine until she started drinking energy drinks. And there's a really famous like case from two thousand eleven of a girl in Maryland who was fourteen at the time. Her name was a Ni Fernier or either one. She was fourteen at the time. She drank um to twenty four ounce cans of Monster in a single day, uh

and died of cardiac arrest. And she did have an existing condition, a heart condition, but it's not normally a fatal heart condition. And like her parents are like, your energy drink killed our kid from drinking two of them in a single day. Uh. And there are you know, it's not like there's tons of stuff like that. But you know, I have not seen any, um, any any lawsuits of somebody dropping dead from drinking two pepsis in

a day or even six pepsis in a day. So it is it is remarkable and noteworthy that people have suffered some serious like health setbacks from drinking energy drinks, or at the very least around the time that they drank energy drinks. Yeah, I mean, her autopsy straight up said that caffeine toxicity was a factor in her death.

That didn't say. And again, this is where the defense will come for these things, is like, hey, she had a heart issue already, or you know, if you look through all of these lawsuits, they can there are other contributing factors. But certainly, like I said, if you have a if you have a hard condition or really high blood pressure and your your mowing down six h six Tallboy energy drinks a day, it can certainly lead to

some poor health outcomes. It certainly can, especially especially yeah, like you said, if you have a pre existing condition, especially like hypertension or heart disease, because caffeine is very well known to constrict your blood vessels, but at the same time it releases adrenaline, which increases blood flow, so you've got more blood trying to flow through tighter blood vessels. And that also occurs in your brain as well, and it can like that's right for a stroke, it's right

for a heart attack. You can make your heart like like palpitate. There's just a lot of things that theoretically could happen and may have happened. Uh, if these lawsuits pan out correctly, Um, that from drinking energy drinks. But again, like you said, generally in having one once in a while, especially if you don't have a pre existing condition, is

probably not going to hurt you. Yeah. I think one area that they definitely have kind of made people a little more aware of in the past like ten years is alcohol and energy drinks. Um. I know, like vodka and red Bull was a really hot drink order for a while, at least in Uh it feels like about the midish two thousand's. Have you ever had one? No, I don't want to drink red Bull. Oh that's right, it's totally it's a totally different animal. The two things

combine to create something totally different. So I can totally see why this is not not a smart thing to do. Yeah. I mean you've got two opposing factors. You have something dulling your senses combined with an upper basically, and uh that that can lead to all sorts of problems. Um, certainly with decision making whether or not you think you can drive, and things like that. Um. I think most

people who enjoy those drinks. Will tell you that's exactly why I drink them is because the upper in the in the energy drink does combat the sluggishness of the alcohol if you're out, you know, kind of partying on the dance floor or something like that. That was so square. Uh here partying on the dance floor. Um. But uh for a while there they were actually selling like four loco was a drink that was a pre mixed energy vodka energy drink um with all the you know, standard

energy drink ingredients, and uh. They the FDA basically kind of came out in two thousand ten and with with a stern warning to stop producing those, and it basically effectively banned them, didn't it. Yeah, it did it. It said you, we really strongly advise you against that. And I would guess that if the FDA advises you against that, you keep doing it, you're really opening up yourself to lawsuits,

especially if you are harming people. And there's a really like um widely cited study from two thousand well after two thousand eleven, because that was the last date they went up to, but it was the Dawn Report Drug Abuse Warning Network Report, and they studied emergency department e D visits h that involved energy drinks among people twelve or older, and between two thousand seven in two thousand eleven, the emergency department visits doubled from ten thousand, sixty eight

to twenty thousand, seven hundred and eighty three in just a few years. And so a lot of people point to that and say, yeah, energy drinks are toxic, they're poison, they're they're gonna kill you, They're gonna the very least send you to the hospital. And other people who are like, well, hold on, let's let's not get into a moral panic

over this. Um. These were the four Loco years, and basically people agree like that widely skewed the number of emergency department visits because mixing alcohol and energy drinks is such a bad idea and has these horrid effects. As far as I know, nobody has done a follow up study to see if it declined after four Loco stop being made with alcohol or with the caffeine and the torreing and the guarine. I think it's still made, but it's like a just like a sweet malt beverage, um

malt liquor beverage. Now, now do you know, with bars have ceased to serve those mixed drinks from fear of lawsuits, not that I know of. I'm surprised that no one's brought a lawsuit against a club, a nightclub that serves someone you know nine Red Bull and Vodkas. Uh you know, yeah, I'm i or maybe it has happened. Yeah, maybe it has, it just hasn't made the news. Who knows. Uh. There have been studies as far as um, like just heart

rate and stuff like that. There was one uh and this wasn't a huge population study, but um, fifteen healthy people between eighteen and forty and they have them consumed two cans of one of the big brands, uh, basically every day for a week and kind of across the board they found, um, you know, significant increases in both heart rate and blood pressure sort of on a day by day basis. So I mean a significant increase. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I guess that's what people are after.

So it's not like we're surprised by any of this. But that's just say that. You know, when you're increasing your heart rate at a steady pace, sustained pace and your blood pressure, you know, that's that's not great for your body. No, And one of the other things that turned up in that study is that it had a cumulative effect. So your heart rate increased by eight percent on day one and then eleven percent on day seven.

So like it had a build up effect, Like you didn't your body didn't get used to it, your body became more sensitive to it, it seemed like. So that was one week, imagine drinking more than two for multiple years, you can imagine that it could conceivably have a really bad law effect on your long term cardiovascular health. Yeah, but you also did find some studies that sort of

showed that they can increase your mental performance right in focus. Well, red bull specifically has been found from studies possibly supported by the Red Bull Institute of Science and Stuff, UM that red bull improves attention, kind centration, memory, driving quality, reduced variation in speed while you're driving, less mental strain in prolonged driving which is four hours, and faster motor reaction time. Like it Actually it does have that effect

on you. Um. Again, it's just a question of you know, what's the health trade off if there is any, and we definitely need more study on that. Well, they probably could find the same result in a meth amphetamine study. You know exactly what is it? Um? Benny's. If you take some Benny's, you probably do. Man, we're just so square today. So yeah, he takes some Benni's and you go get down on the dance floor. But the real question, though, my friend, is is Monster energy energy drink a satanic drink?

I I have a love hate with the internet, don't you. Well that's sort of one of those dumb Internet urban legends, right, is that it's Yeah, it's like a six six six thing. Yeah, because if you've ever seen the Monster logo, it's like claw scratches that form the M but they're clearly three separate scratches. And some people said, hey, that looks like

the Hebrew vov, a Hebrew number. Well letter um that represents six, the number six, and there's three claws, So clearly this is just saying six six six right in our face there there Um. Their slogan is unleashed the Beast, which is of course another name for the devil. And apparently if you look closely, I see what people are saying.

If you look at the oh in Monster on the logo, there's like a cross in the middle of it, like a plus sign, but one like the cross section is down a little further so that if you tip it up, you're you're you're looking at an upside down cross the logo. Yeah, it's just this is what happens when you drink too much energy. Just start paying attention to stuff like this. It was wholly created from from people drinking this stuff

at the time. That's right. I would say, chuck Jerry's out, wouldn't you, Not on whether monsters satanic or not, but on um, whether energy drinks are bad for you or not. Yeah, they're not for me, but um, I mean I think any like you don't want to drink six sodas a day, right, you know they say it's all in moderation, that's the key to life. You don't want to drink six coke

zeros a day, No, you really don't. And also six don't drink six anything a day except water or And if you are, take the time and respect yourself enough to go look up and see, like if if anyone studied what all that stuff is going to do to you, and then make a more informed decision rather than just be like I like this, Yeah, but we're not doctors.

That's just our suggestion. Yes, anything else. I got nothing else. Well, since Chuck said he's got nothing else, and obviously it's time for a listener mail, I'm just gonna call this

a nice letter of appreciation from a nice fellow. Hey, guys, my name is Jonathan Bednar, and I just wanted to thank you on the tremendous job that you and your team do operate heavy machinery all day, which seems fun, but it can be rather monotonous and boring, and your podcast really gets me through the day whenever discussions of the podcast come up with my friends or family, and make sure to hype stuff you should know as much as possible. Just the array of topics that are researched

so thoroughly is really refreshing. And I just leave off of whatever episode I was on and keep on going because even the quote boring sounding ones end quote sometimes end up being the most interesting. So thanks a lot, guys and ps ps. I've listened to Josh Clark's Into the World podcast about five times now. Thank you. Very fascinating stuff all the way around, So go check out Into the World with Josh Clark. Uh if you're into movies,

go listen to the retired movie Crush. But there's still a lot of really fun, great movie Crush episodes out there you can go listen to, and um, it's good stuff. So thanks Jonathan for that word of support. We need those these days. Yes, thanks a lot. Jonathan is nice to hear that kind of thing. Um, And if you want to be like Jonathan and send us a word of support, we're always open to that. You can send

it to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.