14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers say in a new study that heavily caffeinated drinks can have a severe effect on consumers' cognitive abilities, and urge the general public to use them with moderation. The effect is the exact opposite as those experienced by people drinking only moderate amounts of caffeine daily.
Previous investigations have demonstrated that consuming a cup or two of coffee or green tea per day tends to boost cognitive abilities, but doing so in excess has the opposite effect, impairing those abilities the more you drink.
These findings are very important as far as public health goes, considering that young people and teens tend to consume heavily caffeinated energy drinks such as Burn, Red Bull and Monster nearly on a daily basis.
The reasons why they do so are multiple, ranging from the need to be up studying or partying until the wee hours of the morning to cutting the effects of alcohol intoxication.
In a new set of experiments, conducted by researchers at the Northern Kentucky University, a team asked a group of students to submit themselves to a series of tests related to caffeine consumption.
Some of the test participants were given a low dose of the chemical, the rough equivalent of half a can of Red Bull, and then subjected to a reaction-time assessment. Results showed that they did best of the entire lot, LiveScience reports.
In the tests, the subjects had to respond as soon as possible to the appearance of targets on a computer screen. Those who were given high doses of caffeine exhibited significantly lower reaction times overall, the team reveals.
In another segment of the study, the research group asked the students themselves about how stimulated and/or mentally fatigued they felt after consuming the chemical.
Participants who received a full can of Red Bull reported experiencing less fatigue and more stimulation than the others, but they were also the ones who had scored lower on the reaction-time test.
“This finding is of interest given that energy drinks are frequently mixed with alcohol, and the acute effects of alcohol impair response inhibition,” explains NKU study researcher Cecile A. Marczinski.
“Since regulation of energy drinks is lax in the United States in regard to content labeling and possible health warnings, especially mixed with alcohol, having a better understanding of the acute subjective and objective effects of these beverages is warranted,” the expert goes on to say.
Details of the new work, which analyzed 80 college students between the ages 18 and 40, were published in the December issue of the scientific journal Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology.