Go easy on the caffeine
October 22, 2018
There is good news for all you fine, caffeine induced people: Coffee can’t technically kill you—well, not immediately, that is, and most likely not in a liquid form.
But, just because it’s rare to die from caffeine doesn’t mean you should down four cups of coffee, two energy drinks, a tablespoon of pure, uncut sugar and a $1 coke from McDonalds. Then, you might have some problems.
In 2017 Davis Allen Cripe, a 16-year-old boy from South Carolina, died of heart arrhythmia after drinking a Mountain Dew, a café latte and some type of energy drink, according to an April 2018 article in Vox. This rare case started a lot of conversations over the intake of caffeine and whether or not everyone needs to jump to conclusions and ban it to protect the children and all those other whacky reasons. OK, no one tried banning caffeine, but a lot of people were concerned over whether or not it was dangerous, and on top of this, death the FDA was already investigating five deaths that were linked to Monster energy drinks, according to a May 2017 article in Forbes.
And in the same article it does state that death from caffeine is “quite unusual,” but there is a chance that after drinking more than 400 milligrams of caffeine a day someone can go into “superventricular tachycardia.” That means your heart rate accelerates to 180 beats a minute but not to the point of it being dangerous; however, it’s definitely something that needs to be lowered.
Then there’s ventricular fibrillation, which is what Cripe died from and means you have an erratic heartbeat and your heart will just quiver instead of beat, according to the Forbes article.
In the same article, Thomas A. Sweeney, M.D., associate chair of the department of emergency medicine at Christiana Care Health System in Wilmington, Delaware, was interviewed and said when the heart is stimulated and causes a rhythm problem, the heart is going to go into ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation.
Now, the thing to remember is that both ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation can be fatal, but it usually takes an incredible amount of caffeine to cause that unless there’s something else at work, according to the Forbes article.
But, according to the Vox article, they referenced a 2017 study by Sweden’s Jones that found 51 caffeine-related deaths between 1959 and 2010 but they said the real problem isn’t from drinking caffeine; it’s from powdered caffeine.
According to the FDA, powdered caffeine is pure caffeine, and one teaspoon is equivalent to 28 cups of coffee. To put that in perspective, according to the Vox article, it takes chugging about 30 cups of coffee in a very short period of time to really do some damage to your body—I mean, we’re talking vomiting, abdominal pain, seizures all the works.
Let that sink in. One teaspoon equals 28 cups of coffee.
Powdered caffeine or caffeine supplements or even caffeine pills that you think will help you better than a cup of joe really won’t, and actually that’s what can kill you, if you take too much.
See there is a bottom line to this. Caffeine in general is fine. It even has some health benefits, but like many other things you have to take it in moderation.
The Mayo Cinic recommends that when you start having migraines, insomnia, nervousness, irritability, restlessness, fast heartbeat, you’re always urinating or you have muscle tremors, then you need to cut back on the caffeine.
And most importantly, don’t consume more than 400 milligrams of caffeine a day (again, that’s four cups of coffee a day). You want to be able to make it to your exam—you know, the one you stayed up all night drinking coffee studying for.
If you’re really concerned about being able to stay up all night to study, then you might want to try studying the material sooner.
Just a thought.