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Last Issue:
Tuesday,
December
18
2007
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Increased Energy, Lowered Judgment?
By Monette Austin Bailey
Published on 17-Apr-07
Looking at health risk behaviors for a college life study she began three years ago, university researcher Amelia Arria investigated the usual suspects, such as drugs and alcohol. When one of her student interviewers mentioned that she should add energy drinks to her list of substances, Arria was intrigued.
Arria, deputy director of research at the Center for Substance Abuse Research, says that she didn't really know anything about energy drinks before the mention. She added questions to her survey to tease out this new element for her project, The College Life Study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
She wasn't aware that young people are mixing the highly caffeinated, sugary drinks with alcohol. A dangerous practice, since it is known that users will feel less drunk when consuming the two liquids at the same time. "They're still impaired, but they're not sleepy," she says.
Arria notes that there could be a connection, though not a direct causal one, between students that take risks by mixing alcohol and energy drinks and other risky behavior. "Not to say that risk taking behavior is bad," she says, "It could be good. However, if the student is not aware of the potential risk of what they're doing...
Early data from her study shows that students using energy drinks are more likely to have a history of "higher levels of alcohol consumption, involvement with illicit drugs, and non-medical use of prescription drugs," she wrote in remarks for a Federal Drug Administration hearing in December on functional foods. She's asked the FDA to look further into energy drinks' usage and possible adverse health consequences.
"We need to be concerned about individual vulnerability to high caffeine consumption," she says."One of those [16 oz] drinks can have 300 milligrams of caffeine." In comparison, a 12-ounce cup of instant coffee contains 100 mgs of caffeine. According to an article in the Deseret (Utah) Morning News where Arria is quoted about her FDA appeal, ingesting more than 100 mgs per day may cause mild addiction.
She offers several suggestions for learning about the possible health risks. Instead of going to company Web sites for content information, Arria suggests visiting the National Institutes of Health's site, www.nih.gov, or NIDA's site, www.nida.gov, for information on caffeine content and its effects on the body. Also, students, or anyone, should monitor how they feel after consuming an energy drink. Parents, she suggests, should pay attention to their teens' consumption as well. Schools can play a part in educating on the risks, but
it needs to be more than a one-shot deal.
"It's like a virus program for your computer. It's stupid to run it once. You have to run it regularly and update it so that you know what's out there. We have to wonder if we are protecting
our children to the same extent we are protecting
our computers."
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