Heart disease? Skip the energy drinks

If you have heart disease or high blood pressure, you may want to avoid drinking the so-called energy drinks that have become so popular. The energy drinks aren’t the same thing as sports drinks, like Gatorade though. These are the ones that promise “to give you wings” or keep you awake all night.

A study that was published online on Wednesday in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy , has found that healthy adults who drank two cans a day of a popular energy drink had an increase in both blood pressure and heart rate. The researchers did point out though, that there didn’t seem to be any changes in the heartbeats themselves, as seen with an ECG (electrocardiogram).

The small study (15 men) looked at both blood pressure and heart rate for one week. Two days before the study started, the men stopped drinking or eating anything with caffeine and other than the study energy drink, they didn’t consume any for the week-long study.

What the researchers found was that the men’s heart rates rose, on average, 7.8% on the first day of the study and by 11% at the end of the week. Their blood pressure rose at least by 7% throughout the study, starting the first day.

Why would the blood pressure and pulse go up? The ingredients of the drinks do that. The main ingredients are 80 mg of caffeine (3 x the amount in a bottle of Coca Cola), 1,000 mg of taurine, an amino acid that is said to play a role in the heart, and about *5* tablespoons (not teaspoons) of sugar. All in one 250 mL can.

The role of caffeine and sugar is obvious, but we’re not so sure about the taurine. The amino acid does exist naturally in some of the food we eat, but recommendations seem to be that we shouldn’t consume more than 3,000 mg of extra taurine per day. If you drink three cans, you’re at your limit.

So, if the drinks have such an effect on healthy hearts, perhaps those with problems should avoid them altogether.

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