What do you think of energy drinks? Are they all bad?

Question

Erin Carson · Answer

Hey, Brett, interesting question. Energy drinks, because there's a lot of ways we can define that. If we're talking about stuff that's just like the goal of that is to get a teenage kid to be able to perform better after 3:00 pm because they don't sleep, then I'm not really into those kind of energy drinks. But if we're looking for a way to maybe use a little bit of caffeine, boost our afternoon, or a little bit of a performance within training or racing, they're definitely not all bad. I think it's just context of how you choose to use them.

Mike Danielson · Answer

Great question bread. Do I think all energy drinks are bad. I think, at one time, they pretty much all were bad. Meaning that they had way too much caffeine, meaning over 200 milligrams, a day, lots of sugar and the other thing that we would find with energy drinks as they evolved as they use proprietary formula. So you really never knew what was in them, or you didn't know how much of each ingredient was in that, you know, ingredients masquerading as caffeine and sugars and Not good news is there's been a few developments that I think have changed the category. For some manufacturers. Meaning one is reducing the amount of caffeine below 200 milligrams per serving or recommended usage. And that was really made possible by a non-essential amino acid called l-theanine, and l-theanine is a naturally occurring, amino acid that's found in green tea and matcha. And what it does in those, two beverages. Is that offsets the amount of Of caffeine kind of blunting its effect, but not eliminating him. Now that that's been added to beverages of today. Ideally 100 to 150 milligrams. They're able to reduce the amount of caffeine. Meaning, keep it in under 150, but deliver the benefit that we're all looking for, which is calm. Clear focus, a little bit of energy, but not too much. So definitely look for something as the Intel Inside ingredient on, many Beverages. And even even Energy Products that are in Stick packs and capsules and look to definitely lower your caffeine intake. And speaking of caffeine. One thing that's starting to evolve on the ingredient side, is whole green coffee, bean powder. Sometimes it's referred to as raw coffee. This gives you again that small amount or lower amount of caffeine. We need 100 to 150 milligrams, but for the entire day, meaning like G, 67 hours of delivery, time of that one dose of caffeine. And that's Does the whole green coffee? Bean is all kinds of polyphenols and it has fibers and in such. So as it digests through the body, it's slowly releasing, that caffeine that you're looking for and delivering all the benefit without the Jitters really kind of as nature intended. Hope this helps.

Dr. Katherine Wojnowich, MD · Answer

So what do you think of energy drinks? Are they all bad? That is an excellent question. And I think energy drinks can mean any one of a number of things. And so like coffees and energy drink, it has caffeine and it's going to help you work out. The truth is that caffeine is an ergonomic aid. So it is something that helps us to perform better. Obviously there's a bell curve there and if you have too much caffeine then you're going to feel jittery and anxious and won't be performing well. So maybe a cup or two is probably what's reasonable for most people. And I think absolutely, it definitely gives you that edge. It makes it feel easier to perform. When they look at studies with cyclists and caffeine, they find that there is prolonged time to fatigue ability, so people feel like they can exercise for longer and that the perceived workload is reduced and so it doesn't feel like you're working as hard. The other thing that I'll point out though is that they find that if people use caffeine chronically, like you drink coffee every day, probably the benefits of that on race day are reduced. And so it might be something if you're trying to get that extra little boost from the energy drink that you actually don't drink it every day and just take it 30 minutes before your competition. That being said, obviously there's oftentimes a lot of other things in all of those energy drinks that are of more dubious benefit. And so there can be a lot of sugar and a lot of carbohydrates in those drinks. They oftentimes will be somewhat of a diuretic and so you really have to be careful about consuming an energy drink and making sure that you don't get dehydrated, especially with a prolonged endurance thing. They may include B vitamins which can sometimes improve our sense of energy or certainly some of the amino acids. So I don't think they're all bad. I think you do have to look though at what the ingredients are and how much you're consuming. And again, if you want it to actually be a boost, it probably shouldn't be something that you're drinking every day in order to actually get that ergonomic benefit.

Lauren Link, MS, RD, CSSD · Answer

I'm not a big fan of energy drinks in general, they tend to have a lot of caffeine, sometimes dangerously high levels and sometimes a lot of sugar as well and they also live in this kind of weird gray area where they're not exactly a food but they're not exactly a supplement and because of that they tend to have not great regulation around their labels and their caffeine labeling especially I will say if people You want to use an energy drink? I recommend Red Bull and I have no Financial affiliation with Red Bull at all. The reason I recommend them is because they actually are NSF for sport certified which means that they are third-party independently tested and we can guarantee with that that the 80 milligrams of caffeine which is a very reasonable dose similar to a cup of coffee is actually 80 milligrams of caffeine so that third T testing and the moderate dose of caffeine compared to much higher amounts in, some is why I recommend that if people want to use one. But ideally, I think whole food sources of caffeine like coffee or tea, just eating meals, getting natural energy, through carbohydrate, and getting plenty of sleep are at the better options. Hopefully, we're not relying too much on these stimulating drinks like energy drinks.

Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS · Answer

What do I think of energy drinks? Are they all bad? Yeah, kind of look every so often when there's a temptation to just dismiss a category of commercial products like energy drinks somebody somewhere will come on with an all-organic neck. Beautifully, sourced beautifully formulated, you know, Artisan drink in that category and then you can go, well, they're not all bad. Because that guy made a decent one but generally speaking, I don't I don't like the concept of energy drinks. I think that we don't need to take something for energy energies are natural birth way. You don't need to give a two-year-old anything for energy because they come out of the box that way. So we got to look at what is keeping us from having that Natural Energy? What can we do to get out of the way of our own expression of natural vitality? I'd rather than what can we do when we're dragging and we're tired and we're exhausted in our adrenals are blown out and and we're just driving ourselves on at 100 miles an hour, and all we can do is walk two miles an hour. What can we take to not notice that and there's plenty of things you can take to not. Notice that caffeine cocaine. There's all kinds of stuff, good bad and indifferent. But the point is what you really want to do is create a lifestyle which includes the right amount of sleep and the right amount of recovery and the right amount of meditation. And Action, all the things that make people healthy and vital. You want to build a life like that, so you don't need an energy drink.

Matthew Pendola · Answer

Our energy drinks all bad. No, I just think we have to keep in mind that the job of a stimulant is to give us the perception of increased attention. So that being said, we can easily over consume energy drinks. I think they're very available for a reason. They're marketed that way and because they're so available. I think we tend to go to them too often. I think we can even rely on them too often. So So there's no one energy drink that I think is better or necessarily that much worse. I think that it's all really coming down to us as consumers and whether or not we're making better decisions looking at the long-term approach to taking in energy drinks. I think it should go in line with our goals. And the timing should be right and we should know how much we're putting in as a coach. I have run into To that problem, seeing athletes that are taking in much, much higher, dosage, that is really useful for them which can start to create other problems. There are times when we need additional sugar, that's in an energy drink and there's times when we don't obviously, so it can serve us. Well, I think it's more about whether or not we are being responsible about it in the first place.

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"What do you think of energy drinks? Are they all bad?"