That and dietary supplements. So many people take dietary supplements without ever getting a simple metabolic panel to even see if they need the supplements.
I just read a BBC story about a man who nuked his liver by taking concentrated green tea capsules. He requires a full transplant and four years later his kidneys are failing and he has chronic abdominal pain. It seems that one or more compounds in green tea (safe as a beverage, problematic as a concentrate) may negatively impact liver function in some genetically vulnerable populations. Truthfully though, it’s not kn…
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.
This rings true from my experience in Afghanistan too. We did route clearance in RC North, and were often out for days at a time. Very little bad sleep, end up scraping together whatever cigarettes were available so few people had their preferred brand, the same tired MREs, plastic tasting water which was used for brushing teeth as well as drinking, etc. We did, however, get cases of Rip It and huge boxes of Cliff Bars from the chow hall, sometimes two or more to a truck (3-6 guys). Eventually, all you want is a "flavor" of some kind, and it starts to matter less and less where it comes from. We were all aware that it was better for us to drink the shitty water, but the desire for some kind of gratification eventually overwhelms even the most conscientious efforts to be healthy or maintain balance.
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…
I knew the Iraq war was going downhill when in 2004/2005 the DFACs switched from "free unlimited Red Bull" (4-6 per meal, plus whatever you filled pockets with and drank in between) to Rip-Its and a limit of 2 for takeout.
Does the military still hand out amphetamines and/or modafinil, or is caffeine really the alertness/wakefulness drug of choice?
>Does the military still hand out amphetamines and/or modafinil, or is caffeine really the alertness/wakefulness drug of choice? Actual stimulant use is restricted to special forces and flight crews. But anecdotally, the energy drink consumption in the Army is out of control. I can remember people literally ordering pallets of Monster to show up on training exercises. Nicotine too. It's not uncommon to see someone wi…
If they didn't want you to order it by the pallet, it wouldn't have an NSN :)
Ambien was also handed out for long-haul flights for a lot of people, which was pretty nice when crossing a bunch of time zones. I don't know at what level of authority that was authorized.
> I can remember people literally ordering pallets of Monster to show up on training exercises. What like as a replen demand? Aren't they restricted to using issued rations on an exercise? And how are they getting them deployed?
> Aren't they restricted to using issued rations on an exercise? That and what you can manage to bring with you. Back when I was in the infantry you carried whatever you took to the field so we tended to pack light(ish). I used to take a little camp stove so I could have hot coffee in the morning and other people would pack stuff like ramen or whatever. Even when we were living in holes ~1km off the Iraqi border they…
Red Bull cans fit in 37/40mm round ammo pouches/elastic loops, something I learned in Iraq (I never had a 40mm, but there are a lot of molle pouches for 40mm which were useful for other stuff).
Also Amazon or reship-stuff-from-Amazon to APO/FPO addresses was great.
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…
Gotta have my /sipps/ tho.
I'm actually curious now if the 30 year old boomer meme is in any way an outgrowth of the Iraq war. The aesthetic the meme embraces reminds me a lot of the guys I knew my age and older who served. Gonna have to reflect on this a bit.
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…
It also contains taurine, unlike coffee, which "crosses the blood–brain barrier and has been implicated in a wide array of physiological phenomena including inhibitory neurotransmission, long-term potentiation in the striatum/hippocampus, membrane stabilization, feedback inhibition of neutrophil/macrophage respiratory burst, adipose tissue regulation and possible prevention of obesity, calcium homeostasis, recovery from osmotic shock, protection against glutamate excitotoxicity and prevention of epileptic seizures." [0]
"Long-term potentiation in the hippocampus" in conjunction with traumatic stress is plausibly causally related to PTSD.
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…
+ Sugar
Yeah, I thought real kick comes from the high sugar content. I used to consume a lot of sugar, but over time I kind of laid off of sugar. Recently, I drank one monster can. Holy shit - I was buzzed and exhausted after.