YOU NEED TO KNOW
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A “fit and healthy” man was rushed to hospital after suffering a stroke caused by “high” blood pressure
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After being discharged, his blood pressure started to rise again, and during a follow-up visit, he shared with his doctors that he consumes 8 energy drinks a day.
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The man was drinking more than 3 times the recommended amount of caffeine
A “fit and healthy” man’s habit of downing 8 energy drinks a day caused him to have a stroke — and was left with permanent damage.
A 54-year-old warehouse worker presented to the emergency room with numbness, weakness on his left side, and ataxia (disturbance in balance and movement), according to a case report in BMJ Journals. He was “normally fit and well,” the report says — except for his blood pressure.
“His blood pressure was sky high – about 254 over 150 millimeters – but when you looked at him you’d never know, because he looked so good. That’s why we call hypertension the silent killer,” Dr. Sunil Munshi, consultant physician at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust in the United Kingdom, and senior author of the report, told CNN.
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Stock image of a patient in a hospital bed.
Normal blood pressure for a man his age is less than 120 over less than 80, according to the American Heart Association. His numbers are classified as “hypertensive emergency.”
The blood pressure had caused “a stroke in the deepest part of the brain, the thalamus, which explains the lack of stability,” Munshi told the outlet. The man, a warehouse worker from the Sherwood district of the English city of Nottingham, was admitted and treated with five different drugs to lower his blood pressure.
After he was released, his blood pressure started to rise again, leaving the doctors confused – until, as Munshi shares, he told the doctors about his energy drink addiction.
“Each day he consumed eight very strong energy drinks to stay alert for his job – two cans at four different times during the day,” Munshi told CNN. “Each of the drinks contained 160 milligrams of caffeine. Suddenly the diagnosis was clear.”
The Mayo Clinic says that up to 400 milligrams of caffeine a day “appears safe” for most adults; the patient was drinking more than three times that amount.
Too much caffeine can increase your risk of developing cardiovascular disease, according to a study by the American College of Cardiology.
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Stock image of energy drink tops.
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He stopped drinking energy drinks (the specific brand was not identified in the study), and his blood pressure returned to normal. But the persistent impact of his stroke and addiction to energy drinks remains, he told his doctors, for CNN.
“I obviously wasn’t aware of the dangers that energy drinks were causing myself,” he said, explaining that he was “left with numbness [in my] left side hand and fingers, leg and toes even after 8 years.”
As Munshi explained, there are other ingredients in energy drinks that can contribute to health problems. “Energy drinks containing caffeine plus taurine produce much higher blood pressure than caffeine alone,” he said. “They also contain high levels of glucose – we know that sugar damages blood vessels in diabetes which leads to heart damage.”
Read the original article on People