Tag: red wine

The real health concern behind energy drinks

Could your regular normal drink give away your age? Possibly. It is conceivable that your pick-me-up in the morning is a general indicator of age. Those who prefer nothing more than a coffee are more likely to be working adults in their mid thirties or older. Those within the younger age brackets prefer to get a caffeine fix from energy drinks, the most popular among them being Red Bull, whose popularity has arguably been enhanced by its ability to be mixed with other drinks. Why is there this disparity in preference? It has been suggested that the older generation are more health conscious of the levels of sugar within the energy drinks and their effect, and hence avoid consuming them, while younger professionals who perhaps lead a more active lifestyle, including going to the gym, are more inclined to think they will somehow burn off the sugar over the course of the day, and they need the sugar to power them through the day, in addition to the caffeine.

Research suggests this kind of thinking pervades the younger generation, even right down to the teenage age group. In a bid to seem more mature, many are adopting the habits of those they see around them. The image of a twenty-something with energy drink in hand along with a sling bag, possibly a cigarette in the other, on the way to work, whatever work may be – perhaps a singer-songwriter? Or something with a socially glamorous title – is seemingly etched on the minds of youngsters as a life of having made it. This, coupled with the media images of celebrities on night outs with energy drinks in hand, to enable them to party the night through, have certainly promoted the rise of the energy drink among teenagers. It is arguable that energy drinks are the stepping stones from which the younger generation obtain their high before they progress to the consumption of alcohol. Research has demonstrated that it is usually within three years of starting energy drinks that a young adult progresses to consuming alcohol in the search of newer buzzes.

There are the obvious problems of over consumption of alcohol and it is of increasing concern that the copious amounts of energy drinks among young people prime them to reach for higher volumes of alcohol once they make the transition. Simply put, if a young person has habitually consumed three or four cans of Red Bull every day, and then progresses to try alcohol – usually the drink with the highest alcohol percentage, usually vodka for the same reason of the perception of being socially prestigious – then a starting point appears to be three or four shots of the alcoholic drink.

And one of the drinks that helps bridge the divide between energy drinks and alcohol?

Red Bull mixed with vodka.

Ever seen the videos of young adults knocking down shots of vodka or whisky like a fun game?

It seems that imprinted in the social subconscious is the idea that part of maturity and social status is the ability to knock down many shots of high strength alcohol. These has implications for the health of the future generation.

But it is not just the alcohol time bomb that is worrying. Over consumption of energy drinks causes tooth decay and a high level of caffeine and side effects within the body now.

A study of over 200 Canadian teenagers found that consumption of energy drinks caused incidences of sleeplessness and increased heart rate. They also reported other symptoms such as nausea and headaches.

But while the tabloids, in their usual way, exaggerated the links in the way that tabloids do, claiming that energy drinks can cause heart attacks and trigger underlying stress-related conditions, only one in five hundred suffered seizures, but even these cannot be traced directly to the energy drinks.

Energy drinks not only have implications on health, through the impact of sugar and caffeine, but they are subtly dangerous because they blur the lines between non-alcoholic drinks and alcoholic ones, and make the latter more trendy and accessible. In a way, they are similar to vaping. Both are supposedly healthier imitations of what they are supposed to replace. Apparently vaping has no significant effect on the compared to smoking; energy drinks are non-alcoholic ways of obtaining a high or rush.

The problem, however, is that once users have had their fill of these – the so-called healthier options – these options actually compel the individuals to move on to the less healthier option. And when they embark on the more health impacting lifestyle choices – either alcohol or smoking – the patterns of dependency have already long been established.

So the dangers of energy drinks are not so much they cause sleeplessness and increased heart rates.

It is actually that they propel individuals towards alcohol dependency. The main research question that should be asked, is, “Have you been tempted to try alcoholic drinks mixed with energy drinks such as Red Bull?”

Red wine – the media’s Wonderdrink

If there is anything to be said about the British media, it is that it seems intent to make a superhero or villain out of the common everyday foods we encounter. Every now and again we are presented with small-scale research on food or drink that promises either a miracle cure or a dangerous red flag. One assumption peddled to us is by continuing to consume the food, we will either gain added health benefit without too much effort. Miracle cure just by eating! The counter to this is the article written to warn against continued consumption. Danger food – consume carefully! You are either a superhero, or a villain in the world of miracle foods.

It is safe to assume that the purpose of these articles is ultimately to hook the reader into buying the newspaper to examine the article further. And if it appears on an online version instead, you can be sure that the intention is to keep the reader glued to the page while paid-for advertising revenue flashes on the side panels. To state it cynically, the purpose of these articles is for sales. It might be long before certain foods such as milk might purportedly be the cure to cancer.

We need not spend too much time judging how effective these media reports are. If you are looking to a newspaper as a reference for health advice, you might as well ask about ballet lessons from the petrol station.

One of the poster children for miracle foods is red wine. Depending on what you’ve read, red wine can:

  • Boost immunity
  • Prevent tooth decay
  • Save your eyesight
  • Be good for the heart

But it won’t help you in the fight against diabetes, or help you lose weight. Was worth considering, though.

One of the latest research into red wine studied if, yes, it could find the ageing process. A US study suggested resveratrol, a substance found in the skin of red grapes, may help keep our muscles and nerves healthy as we get older.

Researchers gave mice food containing resveratrol for a year, then compared the muscle and nerve cells of those mice to cells from mice the same age who’d had a normal diet. In the mice who’d had the resveratrol-enriched diet, they found less evidence of age-related changes.

The researchers also looked at another chemical, metformin, but found it had less effect.

Researchers divided laboratory-bred mice into four groups and fed them either:

  • a normal diet
  • a lower calorie diet from four months of age
  • a diet enriched with resveratrol from one year of age
  • a diet enriched with metformin from one year of age

When the mice were aged two years, they looked at their muscle and nerves, at the meeting point of the two (the neuromuscular junction, or NMJ) in a leg muscle. They also looked at the NMJs of three-month-old mice to see how they compared to the older mice.

Compared with mice fed a regular diet, those who’d been given resveratrol or who’d had a calorie-restricted diet showed:

less fragmentation of tissue at the neuromuscular junction
fewer areas where the nerve cells had degenerated, which would have meant that the muscle no longer had input from nerves

The two-year-old mice which had calorie-restricted diets had neuromuscular junctions that were most similar to the three-month-old mice. Metformin had little effect in this experiment.

The researchers say that this indicates less ageing as muscle fibres increase in size with ageing. But this does not suggest if the ageing was beneficial or not to the subject.

Resveratrol has been of interest to anti-ageing scientists for many years and researchers have previously shown it may be linked to a slowing of the decline in thinking and movement, at least in rodents. This study suggests a possible way this might happen.

But the results don’t tell us anything about what happens in humans. They suggest this substance may be useful for further research in humans at some point. They certainly don’t provide a reason to drink gallons of red wine, in the hope of seeing an anti-ageing effect. Drinking too much alcohol is a sure-fire way to speed up deterioration of thinking skills, and can cause brain damage. Too much alcohol in the long term is linked to several cancers, heart disease, stroke and liver disease.

Although red wine contains resveratrol, the amount varies widely, from around 0.2mg to 12.6mg per litre. That’s nothing like enough to get the amounts consumed in this study.

The mice were fed 400mg of resveratrol per kilogram of body weight each day. To achieve the same level of anti-ageing purported in the study, the average weight woman in the UK (around 70kg) would need 28g of resveratrol a day for the same effect. This would be obtained by consuming more than 2,000 litres of the most resveratrol-rich wine. An average weight man would need even more. This would be going beyond side effects and into the realm of health dangers! Or if you were disturbed by the daily consumption of this amount of alcohol, and still wanted to try, you could eat bin loads of berries – you might need fifty of these a day. What’s for breakfast? Blueberries. Snack? Blueberries powerbar. Lunch? Blueberry soup? Dessert? Blueberry cake. Resveratrol occurs naturally in the skins of some red fruits, including some grapes, blueberries and mulberries. But this rate, anti-ageing might be more of a curse.

The study was carried out by researchers from Virginia Tech, Roanoke College and the National Institute on Aging, all in the US, and was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Is there any thing of value we can glean from this research? One certainly hopes that the whole research was conducted for more significance than mere paper filler.

The effects of rosveratol will probably hold the most interest for researchers. One can imagine that scientists will be looking to produce genetically-modified grapes that hold more of the chemical, or refine the chemical until it reaches higher levels of purity. Drugs, medication, and anti-ageing creams may contain higher levels of rosveratol. Why is there the interest in slowing down ageing? It extends beyond the obvious physical aging. Slowing down the process may also inhibit age-related diseases such as cancer, diabetes, Parkinson’s and dementia.

And while it was of little effect in this particular trial, metformin is currently undergoing trials as an anti-ageing drug. While it is one of the drugs used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes, and marketed under brand names such as Glucophage, it is relatively new as an anti-ageing drug.

Belgian researchers researching metformin found it increased the number of oxygen molecules released into a cell. When tested on roundworms, the worms aged slower, did not slow down, nor develop wrinkles. They grew stronger bones and increased their own lifespan by nearly 40%.

Metformin only costs only 10p a day which means it falls well under the threshold of QALY (quality-assisted life years) cost that the NHS uses to measure cost-effectiveness. It is conceivable that either metformin or rosveratol could form the active ingredient of anti-ageing pills or creams in the future.

And when that happens, you can read all about it in the papers again, about how red wine really lengthens your lifespan! You might even want to sign up for a clinical trial!

The British media is really drunk on red wine.

And did you know, that if it wasn’t for red wine, the world of Classical music might not have reached the dizzy heights that it did? While the link is slightly tenuous, it can be said that if it weren’t for red wine, Classical music might not have attained its popularity. Read about it here and decide for yourself.