Boy Hospitalized After Red Bull Overdose
Red Bull sold over 3.5 BILLION cans last year. Just take a moment or two to ponder that. 2007 sales figures increased 17% over the previous year.
However, I digress. A 15 year-old in the UK was taken to hospital with heart palpitations after drinking eight cans of Red Bull.
Eight cans is about 640mg of caffeine – which – to be honest is not a huge amount. Red Bull also contains 1000mg of Taurine, 60mg Glucuronolactone, and 27 grams of sugar per can.
So to get things straight – the overdosing teenager consumed 216 grams of sugar (that’s about 54 teaspoons) along with 8 grams of Taurine.
8 cans of anything is plain stupid.
It’s odd how caffeine makes the headlines – but we never see this: “Boy gets intoxicated after beer overdose”. Despite the fact that happens every single day (or hour). And despite the fact that 1,400 college students lose their lives each year due to alcohol-related injuries (source).
40 Comments
This is to videocWk….
why do you take caffeine pills before bed?!!?!?!?!?
That doesn’t make any sense…
The whole point here is, overdosing on anything is stupid. Whatever your personal tolerance level is, it comes down to why you drink what you drink. Whether you grab an Adrenaline Rush to get through your overnight shift or suck down three Shooters and an RTD to buzz yourself stupid, too much of anything is generally bad, and can be damaging. Common sense.
But I agree that caffeine-related hospitalizations are over-publicized simply because energy drinks are relatively new compared to, say, alcohol. Kids will find anything and OD on it, in the same mentality Josh mentioned above. I say the media and PR should stop making the rest of us look bad when a few idiots hurt themselves with our casual drink.
I have had 8 cans of AMP Energy Drink in one day and all that was wrong with me was that i was a little hyper.
I never thought that energy drinks could be dangerous.
normally, i don’t drink caffeine (neither coffee nor cola nor any other stuff). but once in a while if i decide that i need to prevent myself from falling asleep i would pound an energy drink after another. Since I live in Germany the only stuff one can get is Red Bull or some of the cheap rip offs containing the same ingredients but being cheaper and in larger cans.
However, yesterday I thought i would need a boost of energy to write on a project i have, so i bought two 6 packs of red bull rip offs. In 5 hours I had drunk 5 cans each 500 ml. Having practically no tolerance against coffeine you can imagine how I felt… anxious, hot and then cold,having some minor palpitations…
Later I calculated what I had taken… 2,5l (more than half a gallon) which i drank had a total of about 770 mg’s of caffeine and over 270 gramms of sugar.
today i had a headache most of the time and minor stomach aches. Maybe it was because i had only 4 hours of sleep, but nevertheless i don’t think i will drink so much energy drinks in the near future. i did not collapse or blacked out, but it still feels somewhat nasty -.-
[...] killer, I think this quote from energyfiend.com defends it the best, (Taken from this EF article, Boy Hospitalized After Red Bull Overdose) "It’s odd how caffeine makes the headlines – but we never see this: ‘Boy gets [...]
Caffeine increases anxiety and can cause palpitations… the anxiety mixed with the palpitations would be enough to convince someone something was wrong with them.. but its just a stupid kid who THOUGHT he was ODing… people like that ruin all the fun stuff in life..
red bull taste good but 8 cans.. no… just no.
dude i had 2 spike shooters 1 16 ounce amp 1 24 ounce monster 1 12 ounce red bull and was fine this kid just doesnt have any tolerance
“It’s odd how caffeine makes the headlines – but we never see this: “Boy gets intoxicated after beer overdose”. Despite the fact that happens every single day (or hour)…”
What? Isn’t the reason for this obvious? It’s not reported because it’s not news. Overdoses from something readily available to children, and of whose consequences the public is not widely aware of is news.
[...] and advocacy groups lobby hard to ‘prove the point’ before any more tragedies occur, while media reports range from squishy and subjective to overblown sensationalism making it sound [...]
Too much of anything is bad. Think about it, too much oxygen, by hyperventilating, you could pass out. too much water, and you could die, it’s been reported. Too much sun, and you get a sunburn.
“paul February 26th, 2008 10:35 am
Let’s remember that’s not table sugar in Red Bull. It’s pure GLUCOSE! This guy bombarded his system with 216 grams of the body’s most basic and easily digested fuel. There’s no way enough insulin came be made fast enough to store it away as fat. He was a major dumbass.”
very true.
One time, i took about 790mg of caffeine, that is: 4 caffeine pills, and a java irish blend. after i drank the nasty thing, if I filled the bottle up with water, and took the residue off of the sides (i crushed the caffeine into a powder) i could’ve got every bit of caffeine, but I didn’t. If I did, however, that would be 960mg. whooee.
Its not about the Caffiene. i think in this case that caffiene is the cause for palpitations, However the real danger is Taurine in red bull that consumed at large amounts can lead to anxiety. These kind of dose of taurine are only used in Medical patients.
The countries that have Banded Red Bull state that it is due to the combination of Taurien, sugar, caffiene and glucuronolactone.
I didn’t read all the comments to see if this was already mentioned.. but “it’s odd how caffeine makes the headlines – but we never see this: “Boy gets intoxicated after beer overdose”…” You want to make energy drinks illegal? Alcohol does a lot of damage and its not illegal. I think the best you can hope for is an age limit for buying potent energy drinks.
1400 people die from alcohol injuries a year. And it’s legal.
How many from ecstasy? 70. And you can go to jail for life for possessing it.
Government hypocrisy knows no bounds.
Energy drinks are the latest thing attacked by PTAs and other wannabe “suburban politicians”…as if they didn’t have enough control over their little preppy brats anyway…they attack caffeine because it’s easy; all they have to do is complain. They’re too lazy to touch the real problems like drugs and alcohol, because they would have to actually do something. There are hundreds of news stories about some idiot kid drinking X number of cans of X drink and dying after a basketball game, or being hospitalized with heart palpitations. That’s their own fault; you shouldn’t drink in excess of anything. Even water is a poison at a high enough dose. Stupid people making stupid choices like that kid are going to ruin caffeine for the rest of us responsible junkies. You have to know your limits; I am tolerant to caffeine; one day I had two Amps, a Rockstar, a Nos, and a Sobe NoFear within an hour and a half and didn’t feel more than alert.
One single can of lite redbull sent me into convulsive shock and knocked me to the ground for over an hour until I had fully metabolised it. Had it not been for my partner, I’d be dead. That stuff is lethal and should certainly not be on the market
anything that is more than 100 percent pure of anything is not good for the human body
Psh, kids a pussy if you ask me, I took 4 stacker pills, 200 mg caffein per pill and washed a red bull down, im 14 i didnt go to the hospitle but it fuckin sucked, it felt like i had to puke, then i ate, but i got really hot, then jittery, started hallusinating a bit, my heart pounded so hard my friend could see it beat through my shirt, i felt so energised, but so lazy, i sat in a church for an hour then passed out in a taco bell, whent to his house, felt like i was gonna die the whole time, 8 hours later at 12 26 am, wide awake, heart not pounding anymore, WHAT
4 red bulls, rockstar, monster, and starbucks double shot.im 14.a girl. dont try it. seriously.just dont.
The new Monster “BFC” clearly says 1 per day (24 hours) i drank about 1 1/2 of those in about 1 hour
i usually have a very high tolerance to caffiene but the taurine in it killed me i consumed a total of 5000mg fo taurine in 1 hour, 10000mg of energy blend and 135g of suger i recommend it to anyone who wants a challange