Sports, energy drinks, and sudden cardiac death: stimulant cardiac syndrome

To the Editor,

Recently, it has been detected that unexplained cardiac arrest in some young individuals developed after consuming energy drinks, particularly simultaneously with alcohol intake. It is known that several stimulants are included in formulas of different energy drinks. More credible is the argument that energy drinks affect the cardiovascular conduction system and lead to catastrophic events via lethal arrhythmias (1, 2). The aim to achieve higher levels of athletic performance and academic success leads to a gradual increase in consumption in the young population. Although the mood of an individual in the social environment becomes better in a short time after the consumption of these substrates, the claim about increasing athletic and academic performance is not true. Another important subject that has received too little attention is that unscientific promotions by beverage firms, attractive shows in public fields, more advertisements in readable and visible media, and extraordinary sports activities as stimulants for using the energy drinks stimulate consumption by serving as false models.

The main concern is that these beverages could easily lead to severe cardiovascular events in young and older individuals who have underlying silent cardiovascular disease. Because of their high amounts of caffeine and other substrates, dangerous arrhythmias can easily develop in the hearts of individuals who consume them. The problem is that there are many additional sources of caffeine that are “masked” by the labeling (3, 4). Frequent ingredients such as guarana, ginseng, and taurine have caffeine concentrations in different energy beverages that are equal to, or higher than those found in coffee (3, 4). Which doses of any of these substances with or without other artificial supplements or/and alcohol might be mostly dangerous is one of the most important points that remain unknown.

In any case, it seems clear that energy drinks, some beverages, and some supplements that include stimulants might lead to critical and rarely irreversible cardiovascular events in the young population. Judged by these criteria, this should be discussed to a greater extent in scientific meetings, government-related offices of the health ministry, and public environments for controlling of the intake of these products by means such as smoking in the young population.