Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in the US looked at the medical data of 144 patients who had survived a cardiac arrest following emergency treatment. Results found that seven of them, aged between 20 and 42, had consumed an energy drink some time before the life-threatening event, with six requiring electrical shock treatment and one needing manual resuscitation.
Peter Schwartz, of the Centre for Cardiac Arrhythmias of Genetic Origin and Laboratory of Cardiovascular Genetics, in Milan, Italy, wrote in an accompanying editorial: “Critics might say of these findings, ‘it’s just an association by chance’.
“We, as well as the Mayo Clinic group, are perfectly aware that there is no clear and definitive evidence that energy drinks indeed cause life-threatening arrhythmias and that more data are necessary, but we would be remiss if we were not sounding the alarm.”
Edit to add a link to the study … https://www.heartrhythmjournal.com/article/S1547-5271(24)00189-9/fulltext
Gonna guess that energy drinks and similar products just make it a lot easier to exceed safe limits as compared to lower concentration sources like tea and espresso coffee.
A 16oz coffee has 150-300mg of caffeine depending on the variety; the eight o’clock coffee in my cupboard has 224mg in 16oz. The monster I just drank has 150mg in 16oz. Coffee is certainly not lower in concentration than an energy drink though tea is.
I was specific about espresso drinks for a reason!