Dive Summary:
- A new survey released by the U.S. government has found that the number of people seeking emergency medical help after consuming energy drinks has doubled in the past five years.
- This, of course, coincides with five years of incredible growth in the energy drink sector, a correlation which has not gone overlooked.
- From a low in 2007 of about 10,000, ER visits were up to around 20,000 by 2011, although the government did not disclose what medical conditions the patients had.
From the article:
The report doesn't specify which symptoms brought people to the emergency room but calls energy drink consumption a "rising public health problem" that can cause insomnia, nervousness, headache, fast heartbeat and seizures that are severe enough to require emergency care.
Several emergency physicians said they had seen a clear increase in the number of patients suffering from irregular heartbeats, anxiety and heart attacks who said they had recently downed an energy drink.
More than half of the patients considered in the survey who wound up in the emergency room told doctors they had downed only energy drinks. In 2011, about 42 percent of the cases involved energy drinks in combination with alcohol or drugs, such as the stimulants Adderall or Ritalin.
