Energy drinks: Are they safe for you and your kids?

by Melissa A. Bartoszewski, DC 

(NaturalNews) It seems like a new energy drink comes out every month claiming to provide more “energy,” fewer/zero calories and no sugar. Approximately 30-50 percent of today’s adolescents are consuming these drinks; it’s important for parents and adults of all ages to know if they are really safe. The amount of caffeine in such drinks is often excessive and unregulated by the FDA. Is there really any therapeutic benefit to consuming energy drinks? Are they doing more harm than good? Lifestyle modifications can be made to provide energy the safe, healthy way.

What’s in an energy drink?

Caffeine: central nervous system (CNS) stimulant; adverse effects: nervousness, anxiety, insomnia, tachycardia, palpitations, altered consciousness, paralysis, hallucinations, seizures, etc.
(Energy drinks contain three times the amount of caffeine than cola drinks, and energy “shots” can contain up to five times the amount).

Taurine: Amino acid found in the CNS. Originally found in the bile of bulls and is now synthetically mass produced, even though it is produced naturally in the body. Possible adverse effects: hypertension, seizures, stroke, and death (Group III, 2009).

Guarana: Plant that contains large amounts of caffeine. Adverse effects: restlessness, insomnia, increased heart rate, hypertension, tremors, headache, etc. Each gram of guarana contains between 40-80 mg of caffeine; manufactures are not mandated to include this information on their labels, therefore, each serving size may contain significantly higher, dangerous amounts of caffeine than listed.

L-Carnitine: Amino acid; adverse effects: nausea/vomiting, seizures, abdominal pain, etc.

Ginseng: East Asian herb; adverse effects: headache, hypertension, insomnia, irritability, vertigo, etc.

Yohimbine: Plant-based herbal supplement; adverse effects: hypertension, tachycardia and death.

Megadose of B Vitamins: 2,000 percent B6, 8,333 percent B12. Although these B vitamins are water soluble, increased water intake should also occur when consuming such high doses. Vitamin B toxicity can occur with side effects.

Sugar: Toxic to our bodies and produces effects/addictive behaviors similar to alcohol. Fructose is extremely similar to only one other substance, alcohol (Lustig, 2009).

Energy drinks and shots also contain artificial flavoring and preservatives, which are toxic to our bodies and unnatural.

Who’s drinking this stuff?

46 percent of caffeine overdoses per year are in people under the age of 19. Children who consume energy drinks are at risk for more serious, adverse effects especially if they already take certain medications, have cardiovascular, renal or liver problems, seizures, diabetes, hyperactivity disorders, diabetes, or hyperthyroidism. Children should be getting enough exercise and eating properly to supply their growing bodies with the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients they require. These drinks are also extremely popular amongst college students. Lack of sleep and the desire to “increase energy” are the top two reasons students regularly consume these drinks.

Fighting fatigue naturally

Our society is fascinated and addicted to the “quick fix,” “instantaneous results” lifestyle. Drinking an energy drink will provide a rapid rise in blood sugar, B vitamins and herbs, but does not explain why you are experiencing low energy levels or a solution to fix the real problem (lack of sleep, nutritional deficiencies, etc.).

Energy drinks also pose risks in the workplace (healthcare fields). Safety issues are becoming a problem due to “mental and physical effects of the drinks, which are mainly related to the [CNS] and include heightened alertness, altered sleep patterns, arrhythmias and, rarely, seizures. In the workplace, any pharmacologic agent or substance, such as energy drinks, may present a risk to the delivery of healthcare.” (Guilbeau, 2012)

Consuming energy drinks comes with potential risks, drug interactions and an absence of benefits (Seifert, et.al, 2011). Why not fuel your body with the energy it requires naturally? Nutritiously dense foods provide the ingredients you need to stay healthy and energized. Lentils, beans, eggs, nuts, seeds, vegetables and fruits are essential foods and smart choices to help you stay energized throughout the day. Exercising on a regular basis will also help to boost energy levels and improve your overall health.

Sources:

Nurs Womens Health. 2012 Oct;16(5):423-8. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-486X.2012.01766.x. Health risks of energy drinks: what nurses and consumers need to know.

Health Effects of Energy Drinks on Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults. Sara M. Seifert, Judith L. Schaechter, Eugene R. Hershorin and Steven E. Lipshultz. Pediatrics 2011;127;511; originally published online February 14, 2011; DOI: 10.1542/peds.2009-3592

http://www.uctv.tv/shows/Sugar-The-Bitter-Truth-16717

http://www.uctv.tv/skinny-on-obesity/

http://www.5hourenergy.com/healthfacts.asp#1_1

http://www.pain4glory.com/5-hour-energy-drink/

http://www.washingtonpost.com

http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/dangers-of-taurine/

About the author:
Dr. Melissa Bartoszewski is a chiropractor at Estramonte Chiropractic & Wellness Center in Charlotte, NC. She is a graduate of New York Chiropractic College. Dr. Bartoszewski is also a raw food and natural healthcare advocate. Follow her on Twitter at PolishChiro and be sure to LIKE her Facebook Fan page at https://www.facebook.com/MelissaABartoszewskiDC for daily health, exercise, nutrition, wellness, chiropractic tips and much much more!

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Five foods you would never eat

Five foods you would never eat if you really knew what they were

by S. D. Wells

(NaturalNews) What if when you were seated at your favorite restaurant, they handed you a menu which listed all of the REAL ingredients in every dish, without any fluff or “pretty” names for the food you might opt out of eating otherwise?

It seems as though the United States is one of the most talented countries at ruining a good thing, and over the past 20 to 30 years, food and beverages are no exception.

“May I tell you about our specials?”
“Yes, please.”

Today we are featuring one of the corporate favorites; chemical-washed connective tissue with pus-milk cheese, topped with hormone-laden special sauce on a bleached bun (cheese burger with non-organic ketchup and mayo). It comes with a 16 ounce, ice cold glass of carbonated, aborted fetal cell soda (Pepsi). (http://www.naturalnews.com)

If you have a more sophisticated palette, we’re also serving steroidal, grain-fed, antibiotic-laden cow thigh muscle (filet mignon) with any two sides of genetically modified vegetables smothered in drawn animal fat (butter).

If you’re not a flesh lover, we’ve got the ultimate sea creatures for you; genetically modified and deformed fish from an overcrowded chemical pond, super-sized with artificial growth hormones (farm-raised salmon), plus all-you-care-to-eat cancer-causing corn (GMO corn), with free refills of any synthetic, IBS and migraine causing diet drink.

Or, try our buffet of ocean scavengers from radioactive ocean, hand wrapped in abused pig (shrimp wrapped in bacon).

Oh, and I see you’ve brought your young ones along this evening. They will love our kids menu, which features assorted animal parts minced and smoked with nitrates on high calorie/zero nutrient sugar bread (hot dog on a bun) and all they can drink of our diabetes causing, high fructose corn syrup soda pop.

Here is a wake-up call
Beef, pork, turkey, chicken, milk and eggs are not grown in a package at the grocery store. Most of them are all loaded up with MSG and colored with toxins to make them look good and stay shiny for weeks on the shelf. Sometimes you even see a picture of a happy cow above the dairy or butcher section at the grocer. The cow is usually driving a milk truck or holding some milk bottles like the good ‘ole milk man. Or you see some cute mother hen walking her chicks down a pasture across some pretty green grass, all happy-go-lucky, enjoying their lives out in Mother Nature.

This Americanized, reverse psychology style of marketing keeps your mind off the fact that most animals are jacked up with hormones, living in confined quarters, never seeing the sun, or their parents, and most likely collapsing from sickness onto a cement slab covered in their own feces.

That’s why corporate America has to use antibiotics on the animals, so e-coli and salmonella outbreaks don’t cripple the meat and dairy industries. Plus, most animals are fed GMO corn by-products, which are basically sugar and ferment in their insides, causes stomach and intestinal infections. If you are what you eat, then you are a walking infection, immune to antibiotics and heading for GMO bred cancer.

You are what you eat
Don’t be distracted and fooled by the packaging, the preservatives and the artificial colorings used by food manufacturers to make toxic foods look appealing. It’s all an evil plan so you won’t think about the living breathing animals, which have eyes, brains and a mother and father.

Are you a pet lover? Do you have a cat or a dog which you adore? Did you know that pigs are smarter than dogs? That’s why they don’t call it pig on the shelves at the store. It’s only pork, bacon, sausage or ham. And you won’t find the word cow on anything either; it’s only beef, steak or hamburger. It is truly surprising that chicken is still called chicken, and turkey is turkey. People are creating their own immunity to the hard truths.

Even if you grew up on a farm and your parents taught you how to slaughter the animals for sale or consumption, you certainly weren’t shooting them up with drugs, abusing them, letting them live in their own feces and allowing them to suffer needlessly. If you absolutely must consume meat or dairy, keep it Kosher and organic, and give yourself a fighting chance at staying healthy.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.polyfacefarms.com/

http://programs.webseed.com/Dont_Eat_Cancer__TV.htm

http://www.naturalnews.com/032659_arsenic_chicken.html

http://www.ghorganics.com/GM%20food%20can%20cause%20cancer.htm

http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/

http://www.diabeteshealth.com

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/beautiful-truth/

http://www.forksoverknives.com/about

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Diabetis linked to soda consumption

Over 130,000 cases of diabetes now linked to soda consumption, HFCS

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) For years, advocates of natural health have been hammering away at the message that soda causes diabetes and obesity. The soda industry, meanwhile, has remained in denial mode, mirroring the ridiculous position of the tobacco industry that “nicotine is not addictive.” Soda doesn’t cause diabetes, the industry claims, and it’s perfectly safe to consume in essentially unlimited quantities.

The Corn Refiners Association has joined the denial with its own spin campaign that seeks to convince people High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is totally natural and completely harmless. HFCS is, of course, the primary sweetener used in sodas and soft drinks.

Now comes new research presented at the American Heart Association’s Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention annual conference in San Francisco. This new research reveals that over the last decade, soda consumption has conservatively caused:

• 130,000 new cases of diabetes
• 14,000 new cases of heart disease
• 50,000 more “life years” with heart disease over the last decade

“The finding suggests that any kind of policy that reduces consumption might have a dramatic health benefit,” said senior study author Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo (associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco).

The American Beverage Association, meanwhile, says this study hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal yet and therefore it doesn’t count. Soda consumption doesn’t cause diabetes or heart disease, they claim, because “…both heart disease and diabetes are complex conditions with no single cause and no single solution.”

It’s silly logic, of course: Diabetes obviously has a cause. It’s not some spontaneous disease that appears out of nowhere. And when you go looking for the cause, you obviously have to look at dietary factors since diabetes is a disease related to the consumption and metabolism of dietary sugars. Once you do that, sodas immediately raise a red flag because they’re liquid sugar in a highly-concentrated form that does not exist naturally in nature.

HFCS doesn’t grow on trees, in other words. Nature provides sugars locked into insoluble fibers that slow digestion and lower the effective glycemic index of sugars that are consumed. In nature, sugars are always combined with minerals, too, and many of those minerals help prevent diabetes and heart disease. But High-Fructose Corn Syrup is stripped of virtually all those minerals. It contains no fiber and no healing phytonutrients that you might encounter in plants. As a result, HFCS — sometimes dubbed “liquid Satan” — might be called a dietary poison that causes disease while contributing to nutritional deficiencies that accelerate disease.

Bone loss
Interestingly, this new study did not look at loss of bone density, which is another side effect of drinking soda. Due to the extremely high acidity of the HFCS sweetener combined with the phosphoric acid used in sodas, people who drink sodas often lose bone minerals and end up being diagnosed with osteoporosis (even at a relatively young age).

Other people end up with kidney stones due to all these minerals passing through the kidneys and contributing to the built up of mineral deposits there. Long-term soda consumers may even suffer from pancreatic cancer due to the extreme stress placed on the pancreas following the consumption of liquid sugars.

In all, soda consumption is linked to at least six serious diseases:

#1) Diabetes
#2) Obesity
#3) Heart disease
#4) Cancer
#5) Osteoporosis
#6) Kidney stones

That’s why taxing sodas is more than merely a way to raise money through soda sales; it’s also a way to dramatically reduce the cost of treating these diseases. It’s no surprise that several U.S. states are now starting to seriously consider slapping new taxes on sodas and other “junk” beverages.

That’s not the way I would prefer to see the situation handled, actually. The better option, in my view, would be to ban all soda advertising by effectively stripping Free Speech rights from corporations. Such rights belong only to individuals, not multi-billion-dollar corporations. Corporations whose products physically harm the health of the population at large should not be allowed to openly advertise and promote those products to the public. They can still sell them, they just can’t advertise them.

This is the real solution to the problem: Take away the advertising of sodas and consumer consumption immediately plummets. It’s all the advertising that keeps the soft drink sales machine churning out disease and suffering in the name of corporate profits. Soda companies, of course, will argue that they have a Free Speech right to advertise their products even if they do promote disease. That’s an argument to be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court, of course. But let there be no mistake about it: The continued tolerance of soda advertising is creating a nation of diabetes, obesity and heart disease.

There will be a price to be paid for all this, and I fear it will be a price far beyond what society is able to pay. To raise a nation on sodas and processed foods is to ultimately doom that nation because failed health will ultimately lead to a failed nation. You cannot built a healthy nation upon the backs of a diseased population, and thanks to the soda companies and junk food companies, the United States of America is now a nation of diseased, diabetic, obese consumers who continue to poison themselves every single day with the dangerous chemicals found in heavily advertised food, beverage and personal care products.

If I were the health advisor for a country, I would outright ban all advertising of harmful consumer products (foods, beverages, personal care, cleaning products, etc.), and in their place I’d run public service announcements teaching people about nutrition, disease prevention, vitamin D and commonsense self-care. Within one generation, that nation would be the healthiest in the world, with the lowest rates of disease and affordable health care coverage for all.

The junk food and soda companies, of course, would go broke, and the economy would rearrange itself to open up new jobs in healthier and more productive industries rather than the “disease industries” that dominate America today.

Sugary beverages, you see, aren’t just a disease upon those who regularly consume them; they are a disease upon the very nation that threatens its economy and compromises its future.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.businessweek.com/lifesty…

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