Study links heart issues with energy drinks

Caffeinated energy drinks have more than doubled over the past decade, reaching more than $20 billion in 2024. Despite the popularity among teenagers and young adults, a study presented at an American Heart Association meeting shows energy drinks and other stimulant products are linked to heart problems, including cardiac arrest among young adults. Dr. Gregory Marcus is an American Heart Association spokesperson and professor and associate chief of cardiology for research at UCSF. Doctor, thanks for joining us this morning. Good morning. All right, so doctor, can you break down the core findings to our viewers of the study? Yeah, so it's important to emphasize that this study does not provide definitive proof. It's an observational study prone to bias and potential confounding, but it does suggest that these energy drinks may heighten the risk of dangerous rhythms arising from the lower chamber of the heart. So this, if I remember correctly, this is not the first time we've thought about this, but this is another study on top of the layers of studies that have been done so far looking into this issue. Correct. So most of the studies that have been done related to caffeine have been done in the setting of coffee. And there, there's actually quite rigorous research where there may actually be some health benefits, but it's important not to extrapolate those findings to these synthetic products that tend to have much higher doses and concentrations of caffeine. And even with caffeinated coffee, we did a randomized trial. That suggests it may increase the risk for early beats arising from the lower chamber of the heart called premature ventricular contractions. It is always only reasonable to assume that more caffeine is going to increase those, and those can trigger These other dangerous rhythms. All right, so now we're understanding a little bit more about the differences with caffeine and these other types of drinks that are on the market right now. Why are these products hitting younger adults disproportionately here? Is it just because maybe the younger adults skip the coffee and go right for that cold beverage in the 7-Eleven? Yeah, I'm not certain. Some of it may also be because they tend to be sweet. They're also not something that older folks tended to grow up with. But yes, indeed, one of the things that's very important to to mention is that we all metabolize caffeine differently. So if your friend is able to tolerate a certain amount of a caffeinated energy drink, that does not mean that you will have the same response to it. Different people will metabolize caffeine at remarkably different speeds. So the same amount of caffeine consumed by two different people may result in very different levels of caffeine in those bloodstreams. And one of my concerns about these drinks is because The caffeine is so concentrated, whereas with a cup of coffee, there's enough time for someone while you're drinking it to notice, oh, you know what? My heart is starting to race a little bit. I'm feeling a little anxious. If you're if you're consuming something very high dose and high concentration of caffeine, you may not have that opportunity to recognize the adverse consequences until it's too late. So something like one of these energy drinks here that it may be that you're drinking these energy drinks, but it masks kind of the feeling you get when you're drinking a cup of coffee because of the sugars and extra things that are in there. Well, and because of the concentration of caffeine, that you don't have the opportunity to self-titrate. But you do bring up another important point, which is, you know, some of the benefits that have been observed with coffee may have nothing to do with the caffeine and may have to do with anti-inflammatory properties that are inherent to the coffee itself, whereas these energy drinks tend to be high in concentrated sugars. We know that that's harmful. For example, they may also contain other substances such as taurine. Which has been found to maybe increase the risk for heart failure, a weakening of the heart. What other factors like lifestyle or undiagnosed conditions might actually influence these numbers that we're seeing? Yeah. So again, very important to point out that the study could be confounded. So we don't know precisely what people were doing when they were consuming these energy drinks. And perhaps these differences in adverse events were more a reflection of what they were actually doing at the time rather than the energy drink per se. This is why, you know, this sort of study should be considered hypothesis generating, not definitive proof, but evidence that we We need more rigorous randomized trials. And a reminder that we really don't understand much about the true health effects of these energy drinks. All right. So this is just another link in the chain that is urging more study into this is what I'm hearing about this. Dr. Gregory Marcus, thank you so much for joining us this morning. And hopefully parents keep an eye out for this and kind of keep an eye out for the next studies that are becoming because of this latest study and research done by the American Heart Association. We thank you so much for your time this morning. Thank you. All right. Such an important conversation right now because there are so many energy drinks with a lot of flavors and fun and Halloween themed and everything. I mean, they pop off of the shelf when you see them because they've got the bright colors. And then you look and it's like 200 milligrams of caffeine. Way more than a cup of coffee would ever have. Yeah, great conversation. All right, Sal is keeping an eye on the roads. He's absolutely right about having a cup of coffee.