You walk into a store, and see energy drinks. You think to yourself “I need more energy. I’ll grab one of those.”
Or maybe you think to yourself “I exercise. I can use one of those as a pre-workout.” But are you doing more damage than good?
As is the case with almost every food and beverage, there are benefits and drawbacks. In fact, I have one entire corporate wellness presentation that I do, called “Healthy Foods That Poison: Why You’re Getting Sicker and Fatter Despite Eating Healthier.”
In the past, you might have searched “energy drinks pros and cons”. In this article, we’ll look at exactly that. But before we do, let’s give a quick definition of energy drinks. Energy drinks are drinks (usually in cans) that have caffeine, vitamins, and sometimes herbs that claim to improve energy levels and enhance alertness. Some examples would be Red Bull, Rockstar, Monster, AMP, and others.
Now that we’ve gone over the definition, let’s get into the pros and cons of energy drinks.
Pros of Energy Drinks
Caffeine
This is the ingredient most responsible for the effect of energy drinks. Along with caffeine come all its benefits, like alertness, and the one that exercisers look for, which is…
Enhanced Exercise Performance
Caffeine is one of the best-studied ergogenic (performance-enhancing) aids. It’s one tried-tested-and-true compound that improves exercise performance.
One meta-analysis found caffeine to enhance endurance by 12%. It also improves your power, and makes hard work feel less hard, making it one of the best pros of energy drinks.
If you want to delve deeper into this, just check out my article on the benefits and drawbacks of coffee.
Alertness and Energy
No question about it, caffeine makes you more alert, and it varies person-by-person. The more you use it, the less caffeine makes you alert. Just like anything – the more you use it, the more you need of it to have an effect.
Case in point, when a smoker has their very first cigarette, it has a huge effect. By the time they’ve been smoking for 10 years, they might need a pack a day to have the same effect as one cigarette 10 years earlier.
Want to maintain the alertness-enhancing effects of caffeine? Cycle it. Don’t use it every day. Maybe 1-2 times per week.
Hydration
Of course, you drink anything, and it’s going to contribute to your hydration status. Oh, and have you heard the myth that caffeine dehydrates you? Not true at all. Caffeine only has a mild diuretic effect and only in people who aren’t used to it. In other words, if you drink 250 ml of caffeine, you might lose 50 ml, so you’d only absorb 200 ml. But by no means would you lose more than you consumed. After you’ve been drinking caffeinated beverages for at least 4 days, that effect goes away.
Taste
Taste is both a pro and a con, since it’s so subjective. There are lots of different flavours of energy drinks. Some people describe certain energy drinks as “medicine-y”, and others like the taste.
Cons of Energy Drinks
Sugar
Although sugar is not the devil, if you’re trying to lose weight, any extra calories are going to need to be burned off. Most energy drinks contain sugar, but the range is really wide, from as little as 10 calories (or about 2 grams of sugar) to as much as 54 grams of sugar (that’s about 11 teaspoons).
Of course, if you’re happy with your weight, maybe the extra calories will simply be offset by allowing you to exercise that much harder to burn off the calories you consumed and more.
Taste
As mentioned earlier, since taste is subjective, it’s both a pro and a con.
Additionally, because the biggest ingredient in energy drinks is good ol’ caffeine, all the drawbacks and warnings of caffeine come along with it, like:
Withdrawal
If you’re a regular coffee drinker, have you tried going 1-2 days without coffee? You might start to experience withdrawal symptoms, like headaches, migraines, low energy, dizziness and others. The more you drink, the stronger the symptoms.
Insomnia
There are fast caffeine metabolizers, and slow caffeine metabolizers. Fast metabolizers can have caffeine at 7PM, and fall asleep just fine.
Slow caffeine metabolizers might have a coffee at 2PM, and not be able to fall asleep.
And if you’re wondering – no, your speed of caffeine metabolism has nothing to do with your overall metabolism or your body fat. It’s simply your body’s speed of processing one specific chemical – caffeine.
Anxiety
As I outline in my mental health book, while caffeine won’t give you anxiety if you don’t already have it, in those with pre-existing anxiety, it can make it worse, and even trigger panic attacks.
Blood Pressure
Unlike coffee, energy drinks affect blood pressure differently, despite them both having caffeine. As I talk about in my book on how to reverse high blood pressure, coffee causes a short-term increase in blood pressure (for a few minutes, up to an hour or two), and a long-term mild decrease on high blood pressure (and no long-term effect on people with normal blood pressure).
Energy drinks, on the other hand, cause an exaggerated elevation in blood pressure, in people with pre-existing hypertension. Energy drinks will raise blood pressure in most people, but those who have pre-existing hypertension will experience a greater increase compared to those who have normal blood pressure. That’s why in George’s case, when we cut out energy drinks, his blood pressure dropped substantially in 1 week.
Why the different effects on blood pressure between coffee and energy drinks, if both contain caffeine? I have a couple of theories.
- There is more to coffee than just caffeine. One of the many compounds found in coffee is catechins. And according to one study, it’s possible that catechins have a blood pressure-lowering effect. So caffeine raises blood pressure, but catechins negate that effect, and lower blood pressure. Coffee has catechins. Energy drinks do not, so there’s nothing to oppose the blood pressure-raising effects of caffeine.
- Dose matters. Whereas a small cup of coffee (250 ml) might contain 90-100 mg of caffeine, energy drinks range from 100-500 mg of caffeine.
Other Heart Conditions
Other heart conditions may not work well with caffeine, like arrhythmias, and others.
As you can see, just like any food and drink, energy drinks have both benefits and drawbacks.
Some of you might be thinking “but energy drinks are more than just caffeine and sugar. What about the vitamins and herbs that are in there?”
Vitamins and Herbs in Energy Drinks
The most common vitamins in energy drinks are B vitamins (so vitamin B1, B2, B3, etc.). Why don’t I make a big deal out of them? For a couple of reasons:
- For B vitamins to have any energy-raising effect, you have to be deficient in them. As I talk about in another one of my corporate wellness presentations, Everything You Wanted to Know About Nutritional Supplements, But Were Afraid to Ask, vitamins and minerals are only beneficial for you if a deficiency is present. No deficiency, no benefit.
- Even if there was a deficiency in any of the vitamins, the doses found in energy drinks are too low to do anything. By a lot. For instance, most B vitamins in energy drinks are around 1 mg per B vitamin. The amount needed to correct a deficiency ranges from 10-100 mg, depending on which B vitamin we’re talking about.
And here’s one thing that frequently puzzles me: B vitamins speed up how quickly caffeine leaves the body. In fact, that’s often how I use them. When I’ve had coffee too late in the day, but I still want to fall asleep, I’ll have a B complex, and the caffeine is out of my system in 15-20 minutes, and I fall asleep just fine.
If the doses of B vitamins in energy drinks were high enough to correct the deficiency, they’d also negate the effects of caffeine.
So why are the B vitamins in there, if they are in doses too low to do anything? Marketing! The average person with no training in nutrition sees B vitamins on the label, doesn’t know what’s a high dose and what’s a low dose, thinks that it has some vitamins in it, and therefore must be good for you. Not the case. In this case, the B vitamins are virtually inert.
Guarana
One common herb in energy drinks is guarana. Guarana is simply a herb that contains caffeine. No magic there.
Ginseng
This is another herb commonly used in energy drinks. Too bad that it doesn’t work. In one study, titled “The Effects of Ginseng, Ephedrine, and Caffeine on Cognitive Performance, Mood and Energy”, ginseng didn’t improve energy levels. A second study was titled “Failure of chronic ginseng supplementation to affect work performance and energy metabolism in healthy adult females.” Well… I don’t have to tell you the conclusion there. The title says it all.
So not only is the research behind ginseng for improving energy levels really weak, some of the research shows that ginseng doesn’t actually enhance energy levels.
So if it’s ineffective, why is it used in energy drinks? In my opinion, there are a couple of reasons:
- Marketing again. The consumer with no training in how to read scientific research is just going to take them at their word that this ingredient boosts energy.
- There are mechanisms by which it could boost energy. But mechanisms are what’s called a “soft end point.” They are simply a proxy for what really matters: energy levels (that’s a hard end point). But when energy levels are measured directly, it doesn’t do that.
The Big Picture
I’ve been talking a lot of theory in this article, so let’s bring it back to real life. I want to make a couple of points.
Why do people use energy drinks? Sounds obvious, but it’s because they want more energy. You know the best way to get more energy? Sleep. You know the second-best way to get more energy? Exercise. And waaaayyyyy down the list is caffeine (not to say that caffeine doesn’t have benefits besides energy, but that’s not the topic of this article).
Of course, if you’re driving your car late at night, and you have to stay awake – yeah, have a damn energy drink. The extra sugar and caffeine isn’t worth falling asleep at the wheel.
In real life, do I ever, or have I ever recommended energy drinks? Nope. Even in my competitive powerlifting days, when I needed a boost of energy before particularly difficult workouts (after my sleep, exercise and nutrition was taken care of), I simply drank a small cup of coffee.
