Energy Drink Mayhem Reference: http://ezproxy.scccd.edu:2111/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?

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Introduction My Research article is about the effects of energy drinks alone and with alcohol neuropsychological functioning. Many people turn to energy drinks in their everyday life, regardless if its work, a sporting event, or even just for your enjoyment.People who drink energy drinks are consuming a huge amount of caffeine. Also young adults and recently found they like to mix there energy drink with alcohol, so once word got out about the big idea to mix the two , the energy drink companys started to make their own mixed energy drinks with anywhere from 6-10% alcohol by volume. There has been reported injury and alcohol related illnesses in young adults when consuming an energy drink and alcohol.The doctors went into great depth to find out how these drinks function with your brain. Some drinks demonstrated alertness, reaction time, speech, and visual recognition, when others where completely opposite impairing the brain, with not having accuracy, and delayed memory. About 75mg of caffeine is enough to improve your motor skills safely and in your average energy drink there is about 160mg of caffeine. Objective Caffeinated energy drinks are used on a daily bases, along with energy drinks that have alcohol in them. Many people believe that when you mix alcohol and a great amount of caffeine together you would get negative effects, you do. This has been investigated before but now people want to know how it affects your neuropsychological performance.

Methods The doctors used twenty seven healthy females none smokers aged 21 and over. Participants where recruited threw advertisement in the campus newspaper and flyers posted around campus (university of Tampa Florida). The study was limited to females only due to pragmatic reasons. They found it a lot easier to use the females because of the different alcohol metabolism rate compared to males. To conduct the study they used The Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS). It was initially developed to screen for dementia in older adults but the machine is sensitive to mild impairment. All the participants had to complete a screening procedure and if they passed they went back in 10-14 days. The doctors also asked the participants to try and stay away from caffeine one hour before tests. They used 16oz beverages of Green Monster (nonalcoholic) and Orange Sparks with 6% alcohol by volume. The students met with the experimenter #1 and he recorded blood pressure and then the students where taken into a room and given a beverage and had to drink in in a 15 minute time period. They did not know what type of drink they received. They waited an extra thirty mines to see all the active ingredients kick in. Experimenter #2 ran the RBANS posttest. Results In the nonalcoholic energy drink its a hit and miss, It improved Immediate memory, attention, but it did not help your delayed memory, language, and visuospatial. For the energy drink with alcohol in it affects your neuropsychological quite noticeably. Your immediate memory, visuospatial, language, attention and delayed memory all went down with alcohol.

Strengths The first good this about this study with energy drinks with and without alcohol is you know what you are doing to your brain when you are consuming these products. Not a lot of people look at the big picture and see what they are doing to their bodies. Another great thing about this study is hopefully when people read this or find some way to have knowledge about this situation they will think twice of drinking an energy drink with or without alcohol; they are both decently bad for you, your body, and brain. Limitations One limitation was they had to use girls and not men due to the females pragmatic functions. So they had to count on enough girls to show up and want to do this experiment. Another limitation was they were on a time schedule so they might not of had all the time to figure every little chemical imbalance out. Discussion This article was not too hard to read, I had to read threw it a few times to get a better understanding of it but for the most part, its well written out and gives you good details and goes in depth with the studys. I do think the authors conclusion was valid; they had all these studies and results in writing and in charts for easy to read access. The study and results were presented very well. They accomplished just what they were looking for. They found the neuropsychological functions while intoxicated with anonalcoholic energy drink anda energy drink without alcohol. The results they found could be used for anyone. They were tested on

regular people just like you and I and I personally can assure you we would have the same results. Ive never seen anything that contradicts this study, but I have heard a lot that supports the results from my friends personally. These energy drinks with alcohol have made some of my friends very sick to the point where they throw up blood. I dont have any questions for the authors, I support there results 100%. Conclusion After reading this article I will most likely never drink an energy drink with alcohol in it. I would still drink a regular energy drink but only once in a blue moon. This study is good for a lot of people that drink those. I just hope people get more knowledge about these drinks so they know what they are doing to their brain and body. I would recommend people to only drink the nonalcoholic drinks only. The drink with alcohol is not good for you.

Energy Drink Mayhem Zachary Alvarez FN 40 Willow International Community College center April 7, 2011