Spring Break
Addicted
Students and professors find themselves in the grip of caffeinated beverages
by Matthew Kriegsman
Features | 10/16/07
Posted online at 9:04 PM EST on 10/15/07
/ Last updated at 4:31 AM EST on 10/15/07
It's midnight. You just got back from hanging out with your friends. Only now do you realize, with a sinking horror, that in about seven hours you have a 10-page paper due. No need to worry; wedged between the Chinese takeout and peanut butter in your fridge is the secret weapon on which you have come to rely. Loaded with anywhere between 80 and 300 mg of caffeine, the energy drink you reach for will become your ultimate savior. Forget about sleeping tonight.
The need to stay awake and alert-as full days of work and play have students looking at sleep as more of a novelty than necessity-has consequently been aided by drinks that contain excessive amounts of caffeine. And today, coffee, with 115 mg to 175 mg of caffeine per cup, is not the most caffeinated beverage on the market; energy drinks also pack quite a punch.
Nina Mashurova '11 considers herself a regular consumer of energy drinks. "I drink about three of them a week to keep me up and running," she says. And while that may seem a bit excessive to some, Mashurova argues, "Other energy drinks I use don't have as much caffeine as coffee."
But she was able to recall one bad experience involving an energy drink called Cocaine, which was pulled off store shelves this past May because the company, Redox, was "illegally marketing their drink as an alternative to street drugs," said the Food and Drug Administration this year. The drink is now sold as "No Name" in the United States.
"I couldn't sleep at all that night because I was too wound up from the rush," Mashurova explains. "I would never drink that much again at one time. I like to think I use energy drinks responsibly and would advise anybody to do the same."
For Lev Hirschhorn '11, coffee does the trick.
"I need my caffeine fix in the morning," Hirschhorn says. "It wakes me up and gets me going, but I'd never do it before I went to sleep, simply because I'd be up all night."
Like Hirschhorn, most students wouldn't argue that sleep isn't important. A perpetual lack of sleep has proven to be a cause for many health problems, including increased blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, depression and the risk of heart attack and stroke. In fact, a recent Case Western University study has outlined this growing trend and found that on average, students receive approximately six hours of sleep a night, a far cry from the recommended eight. But while reduced sleep is one issue at hand, extreme levels of caffeine found in energy drinks and coffee is another.
The need to stay awake and alert-as full days of work and play have students looking at sleep as more of a novelty than necessity-has consequently been aided by drinks that contain excessive amounts of caffeine. And today, coffee, with 115 mg to 175 mg of caffeine per cup, is not the most caffeinated beverage on the market; energy drinks also pack quite a punch.
Nina Mashurova '11 considers herself a regular consumer of energy drinks. "I drink about three of them a week to keep me up and running," she says. And while that may seem a bit excessive to some, Mashurova argues, "Other energy drinks I use don't have as much caffeine as coffee."
But she was able to recall one bad experience involving an energy drink called Cocaine, which was pulled off store shelves this past May because the company, Redox, was "illegally marketing their drink as an alternative to street drugs," said the Food and Drug Administration this year. The drink is now sold as "No Name" in the United States.
"I couldn't sleep at all that night because I was too wound up from the rush," Mashurova explains. "I would never drink that much again at one time. I like to think I use energy drinks responsibly and would advise anybody to do the same."
For Lev Hirschhorn '11, coffee does the trick.
"I need my caffeine fix in the morning," Hirschhorn says. "It wakes me up and gets me going, but I'd never do it before I went to sleep, simply because I'd be up all night."
Like Hirschhorn, most students wouldn't argue that sleep isn't important. A perpetual lack of sleep has proven to be a cause for many health problems, including increased blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, depression and the risk of heart attack and stroke. In fact, a recent Case Western University study has outlined this growing trend and found that on average, students receive approximately six hours of sleep a night, a far cry from the recommended eight. But while reduced sleep is one issue at hand, extreme levels of caffeine found in energy drinks and coffee is another.
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