Man hospitalised after energy drinks lead to terrifying organ damage
Britt Jones
Featured Image Credit: Arsenii Palivoda/Getty Images
A man’s love of energy drinks landed him in hospital with horrific internal issues.
Everyone has a vice, and while they come with varying degrees of health risks, energy drinks have been normalised to the point where people will gladly drink several a day without a second thought.
They’re fruity, tangy, sweet or bitter, and they give you a caffeine boost just when you need it.
However, unlike coffee, it was energy drinks that landed one man in hospital with a dangerous condition.
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In the Journal of Medical Case Reports, the instance of a Turkish man’s health emergency came down to his obsession with the drinks.
The 21-year-old sought urgent care at an unnamed emergency department after experiencing nausea, vomiting, and malaise.
According to the report, he was admitted after his laboratory results came back to show he had ‘stage 3 acute kidney injury’.
The kidney disease causes the organs to be unable to properly filter out waste and excess fluid from the blood, leading to a build-up in the body, high potassium, and heart problems.
It can also create brittle bones, a weakened immune system, and even lead to a stroke or heart attack.
While his medical and surgical history was clean, and he didn’t use drugs, he did go on to admit that he consumed 2 litres of an energy drink product every single day for the past month in a bid to win a race.
“He had stated that he had been preparing for a running race for more than a month and that to be better prepared, he had been consuming two L of ‘energy drink’ on a daily basis, which he bought from a local market,” said the report.
You might wonder how a person could drink that much energy drink products every day, it’s fairly easy.
It’s like drinking eight small cans of a fizzy drink, or four small bottles of water.
Sadly, his infatuation with the specific type of drink caused him to have an ‘energy drink-induced acute kidney injury’.
“His serum creatinine increased to a level as high as 10.32 mg/dL, but he did not need any renal replacement therapy,” said the report.
Once he was released, his 'creatinine levels normalized in about 2 weeks after withholding energy drinks’, which allowed him to make a full recovery.
In the end, because of what was presented to the medical professionals, it was concluded that ‘depending on their content and consumption amount, energy drinks may cause acute kidney injury.’