Caffeine is good but energy drinks are dangerous

Today’s Post:  Tuesday, 4-15-2014

1.  Caffeine can wake you up when you need it or really, really want to wake up.

It improves your memory; and makes you a bit smarter and quicker too.

Caffeine can even make you a bit stronger and faster athletically.

THAT is a lot of good things to like!

You do have to work out how to get the positive effect without overdosing on caffeine so much you feel too wired or anxious or have trouble sleeping at night from having too much or too much to close to when you go to sleep.

I’ve found that occasional coffee at key times and tea or green tea the rest of the time come close to doing that for me.

To be sure I was forced into it.  But now I find it does have its points.

I’d have preferred to do it more with coffee but found my reflux acted up too much. 

The good news is that I rarely feel too anxious or too wired from caffeine now.  And, when I do need an extra strong wake up, coffee does that better than it did when I drank tons of it.

The really good news is that both tea – black, oolong, or green teas-- and coffee have LOTS of very protective antioxidants and nutrients besides the caffeine.

Lastly, Whole Foods carries organic green tea at a reasonable price.  AND, the organic instant coffee and organic instant decaf coffee they carry is Mount Hagen.

Mount Hagen’s organic instant coffee is good and comparable to the best instant coffees.  But Mount Hagen’s instant decaf coffee is not just good, it reaches a level I’ve never tasted in any other instant decaf.  It’s extremely good!

2.  Energy drinks, at least the most commonly sold ones, are really harmful at best and extremely dangerous at worst by contrast.

Eliminate all that have high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners and there are less to choose from.

The information we’ve seen suggests you are far better off never ingesting any of those for any reason.

Worse, adding amino acids is not well tested to be safe or effective which some energy drinks do. 

And, adding cheap vitamins is simply a bit stupid. They are not direct boosters of energy and are best gotten from a better quality supplement or highly nutritious foods or both.  Why pay extra for something that is not even an energy booster really?

But energy drinks are dangerous.  They can have five cups of coffee worth of caffeine or even more!

BUT they do not AND ARE NOT REQUIRED TO show how much caffeine they contain.

Oops!  That means that someone who is desperate for energy and drinks two can be overwhelmed by that much caffeine.

People who do this while drunk or for other reasons have even died from this effect.

Why pay someone to do that to you?  Why give YOUR money to a company willing to do that to other people?

If you want close to that much caffeine, drink more cups of coffee.  It works as well.  But you get some corrective feedback early enough to avoid harm.  Most importantly that way you CONTROL how much you get.

With energy drinks, you have no information which means you do NOT have control of how much caffeine you take in.

We think the risk is simply not worth it.

Then when you add the other harmful ingredients in most energy drinks, it really looks to us to be undesirable to ever drink energy drinks at all!