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**A previously healthy man suffered a stroke and lasting health damage after consuming multiple energy drinks ⚠️π©Ί. Learn what happened, how overconsumption can impact the body, and what health experts caution in cases like this.**
“His blood pressure was sky high — about 254 over 150 millimeters — yet when you looked at him you’ve never know it, because he looked so well. That’s why we call hypertension the silent killer,” said Dr. Sunil Munshi, a consulting physician at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust in the United Kingdom.
Munshi is the senior
author of a case report about the man, a warehouse worker from Sherwood,
Nottingham, whose name was withheld to protect his privacy. The paper was published Tuesday in
the journal BMJ Case Reports.
Normal blood pressure for adults is
less than 120 over 80 mm HG (millimeters of mercury). Blood pressure of 180
over 120 or higher is considered a medical crisis that requires immediate
emergency care.
“His left side was
numb, and scans showed he had a stroke in the deeper part of the brain, the
thalamus, which explains the unsteadiness,” Munshi said. “He was admitted, and
we treated him with five different medications until his blood pressure dropped
to 170.”
Back
at home again, the man’s blood pressure continued to climb, reaching 220
despite numerous drugs. Munshi and his team searched for answers for weeks,
running extensive tests that turned up negative. Then one day the man told
Munshi about his energy drink habit.
“Each day he consumed
eight highly potent energy drinks to stay alert for his job — two cans at four
different times during the day,” Munshi said. (The brand name was withheld from
the study.) “Each of the drinks contained 160 milligrams of caffeine. Suddenly
the diagnosis was clear.”
Some energy drinks
can have up to 500 milligrams of caffeine, compared with 30 milligrams in tea
and 90 milligrams in coffee, said study first author Dr. Martha Coyle, a
resident doctor at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.
“In the UK,
guidelines suggest 400 milligrams of caffeine a day, between two and four
cups,” Coyle said. “This gentleman was consuming 1,200 to 1,300 milligrams,
three times the amount.”
The US Food and Drug
Administration also recommends no
more than 400 milligrams a day.
Just weeks after
stopping his consumption of the energy drink, the man’s blood pressure returned
to normal. Today, years after the incident, he is healthy but still lives with
the aftermath of his stroke.
“I obviously wasn’t
aware of the dangers drinking energy drinks were causing to myself,” the man
told his doctors. “(I) have been left with numbness (in my) left hand side hand
and fingers, foot and toes even after 8 years.”
Combinations of ingredients ‘cause
havoc’
It’s not just high
levels of caffeine. Today’s energy drinks also contain blood pressure boosting
ingredients such as the amino acid taurine, Munshi said.
“Energy
drinks that contain caffeine plus taurine produce significantly higher blood
pressure than caffeine alone,” he said. “They also contain high levels of
glucose — we know sugar damages the blood vessels in diabetes which leads to
heart damage.”
Energy drinks also
typically contain ginseng, which impacts metabolism, and guarana, a plant
thought to contain caffeine at twice the concentration of a coffee bean,
according to the study. Milder stimulants such as theophylline, found in cocoa,
and theobromine, found in tea, are often included as well, Coyle said.
Such energy drinks can
cause cardiac arrhythmias, damage the endothelium, the tissue that lines blood
vessels, and aggregate blood platelets, Munshi said.
“When platelets are
aggregated, especially in the setting of high glucose, they can produce blood
clots,” he said. “Young people are often willing to try energy drinks,
especially in combination with other drugs such as cocaine or
methylamphetamine, which have similar effects, and all of these drugs together
can cause havoc.”
Medical literature is
full of examples of the harms of energy drinks, so this case, while startling,
is not an isolated event, Munshi said.
“We have seen other
patients who developed an irregular heartbeat, what we call atrial
fibrillation,” he said.” Another patient developed an intracellular hemorrhage
in the brain, while yet another patient had a stroke in the brain due to a
blood clot.”
Munshi believes doctors need to become more aware of the impact of energy drinks and ask about use during regular checkups, “especially when people come at a younger age with cardiovascular problems or strokes
Munshi is the senio
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