Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The military’s obsession with energy drinks is contributing to PTSD

militarytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 79 posts

Re: The military’s obsession with energy drinks is contributing to PTSD

#41

Post by matt4077 »

Covzire wrote: post #3
nhkssol wrote: post #2

Nothing in the article links energy drinks to PTSD. > High energy drink use, which was classified as consuming two or more drinks per day, was significantly associated with those survey respondents who reported mental health problems, anger-related behaviors and fatigue, the authors found. The above passage is about as close as the article gets to its title, and it's left vague by combining mental health problems, an…

All scientists should be required to take at least two semesters of Chicken-Or-Egg Studies.

All those explaining correlation-is-not-causation to scientists for the 500th time should take at least one semester of "You are not as smart as you think, nor are you very original, or know anything about the copious amounts of statistics scientists have to endure today. You're also conveniently living in a world that apparently allows for cheap and fast intervention studies on rare phenomena with long lead times and no apparent ethical qualms of subjecting people to potential harmful interventions. Because only that could allow you to forgo the imperfect (yet historically highly successful) observational studies"

(-Studies)

Re: The military’s obsession with energy drinks is contributing to PTSD

#42

Post by jcrawfordor »

danielrhodes wrote: post #28

Would this even be a story if people were drinking coffee instead? The active ingredient in Red Bull is caffeine. Yet a cup of coffee has more caffeine than a Red Bull. Their marketing has been very effective in convincing people that energy drinks are more than just a caffeinated drink with a bunch of other chemicals that don’t really work. Because of that, people vilify these various drinks, and now we get an artic…

Red Bull is honestly not that popular in this crowd though, the major energy drinks you see are Monster, Rockstar, and as mentioned, Rip It (really an offbrand of the former two from the maker of Shasta/La Croix). These typically have 160mg of caffeine, which is high for coffee although not by a large margin. The culture around them seems to encourage much greater consumption though, with oversize cans (e.g. 24oz with over 250mg caffeine) not unusual and many people having multiple drinks a day. It does seem like something about them, perhaps the addition of a great amount of sugar, encourages more consumption.

I'm also a little confused by your accusation, since the article discusses a comparative study of two groups, both in a warzone, and finds increased mental health effects in the group with higher caffeine consumption. No one is denying that combat conditions contribute to adverse mental health effects, but the whole point of the article is that these seem to be exacerbated by caffeine use.

Sleep deprivation is becoming a real concern in multiple military branches, and I suspect that the mental impact is not due to the caffeine per se but due to the culture around it: consumption of hundreds of mg of caffeine is viewed as an acceptable alternative to sleep. This is definitely also an issue with coffee, but energy drinks seem to be predominant today.

Re: The military’s obsession with energy drinks is contributing to PTSD

#43

Post by natuz »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #42
danielrhodes wrote: post #28

Would this even be a story if people were drinking coffee instead? The active ingredient in Red Bull is caffeine. Yet a cup of coffee has more caffeine than a Red Bull. Their marketing has been very effective in convincing people that energy drinks are more than just a caffeinated drink with a bunch of other chemicals that don’t really work. Because of that, people vilify these various drinks, and now we get an artic…

Red Bull is honestly not that popular in this crowd though, the major energy drinks you see are Monster, Rockstar, and as mentioned, Rip It (really an offbrand of the former two from the maker of Shasta/La Croix). These typically have 160mg of caffeine, which is high for coffee although not by a large margin. The culture around them seems to encourage much greater consumption though, with oversize cans (e.g. 24oz wit…

(24 oz = 709 ml)

Re: The military’s obsession with energy drinks is contributing to PTSD

#45

Post by mattkrause »

snek wrote: post #6

Just to be safe, until I see more data I'm going to assume PTSD causes energy drinks.

I know you’re being snarky, but the idea of someone self-medicating is not totally bonkers, which would indeed put the causality on PTSD, not the drink.

The classic example is that schizophrenics are much more likely (3x or so) to smoke. Interview with patients suggest that it helps control symptoms and there are somewhat plausible biological mechanisms that could explain why.

Stimulant use (mostly cocaine) is a bit more common in some neuropsych conditions. I don’t know of any studies about caffeine and PTSD specifically, but it seems pretty similar.

Re: The military’s obsession with energy drinks is contributing to PTSD

#46

Post by exabrial »

danielrhodes wrote: post #28

Would this even be a story if people were drinking coffee instead? The active ingredient in Red Bull is caffeine. Yet a cup of coffee has more caffeine than a Red Bull. Their marketing has been very effective in convincing people that energy drinks are more than just a caffeinated drink with a bunch of other chemicals that don’t really work. Because of that, people vilify these various drinks, and now we get an artic…

And a boat load of refined sugar.

Re: The military’s obsession with energy drinks is contributing to PTSD

#47

Post by emersonrsantos »

UncleEntity wrote: post #29
emersonrsantos wrote: post #9

The current facts about coffee and sugar are the following: drinking coffee is good for your mental and physical, while sugar is linked to depression, addiction, anxiety, heart problems, obesity and not surprisingly, PTSD: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4522929/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4086302/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5056806/

Pretty sure my (alleged) PTSD is from the stress of war and almost getting blown up a couple times (well, driving into a major ambush and getting a piece of shrapnel bounced off my helmet probably didn't help either) and not from my previous copious consumption of sugary caffeinated drinks.

PTSD can come from many factors, I'm not saying that it's caused specifically and only by sugar. People who didn't go to war also have PTSD, as we also have soldies who went to war and didn’t come back with PTSD.

Re: The military’s obsession with energy drinks is contributing to PTSD

#48

Post by wisty »

drngdds wrote: post #17
mattkrause wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the causal direction between say, fatigue and energy drink consumption, is not at all obvious....

Considering the effect of caffeine on sleep, it's a very small leap to make

Or people who feel bad but still need to get stuff done may be more likely to drink a lot of energy drinks.

Given the importance of mental health in the military, I'd think it should be enough evidence for some kind of intervention trial though.

Re: The military’s obsession with energy drinks is contributing to PTSD

#49

Post by jondeng »

Does this story show any causation or is it just correlation? From my experience in the Army and deployed it was the units closest to the FLOT who would have the most energy drink usage- if you don't have other creature comforts (sleep, hot chow, safety) you tend to resort to things that you can access, like cheap energy drinks. These units would also see the most combat and have the highest prevalence of PTSD.

Re: The military’s obsession with energy drinks is contributing to PTSD

#50

Post by [deleted] »

natuz wrote: post #43
jcrawfordor wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red Bull is honestly not that popular in this crowd though, the major energy drinks you see are Monster, Rockstar, and as mentioned, Rip It (really an offbrand of the former two from the maker of Shasta/La Croix). These typically have 160mg of caffeine, which is high for coffee although not by a large margin. The culture around them seems to encourage much greater consumption though, with oversize cans (e.g. 24oz wit…

(24 oz = 709 ml)

[deleted]
Post reply on HN