71–79 of 79 posts
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/
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.
The MilFit/CrossFit group I train with now frequently issues warnings about no energy drinks before big workouts.
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Isn't in all red bulls quite a bit of sugar/aspartam? Not a healthy stuff, although it shouldn't cause any PTSD. And what about taurine? Not really very explored substance. Personally I drink similar stuff maybe 2x per year, when I have a long (>1000km) drive ahead. Otherwise wouldn't touch that chemical junk with a 10 foot pole.
I can’t imagine ingesting chemicals. Do you have any recommended chemical-free foods?
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.
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 would assume that people who consume excessive amounts of a sweat fluid from neon colored cans with ridiculous names tagged on it also have lower capability of self reflection and additional tendency towards drug abuse. That might also contribute to less efficient processing of traumatic experiences.
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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.
Personally, I think the 30 year old boomer meme is rooted more in the fact that internet culture moves so fast these days that anything even a few years old is considered dated. Combine that with the definite cultural differences between Millennials and Gen Z, and the boomer meme makes sense.
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There's a third way, very popular among hackers, yerba mate. Used by South American people. It has good caffeine content, but apparently has a slower absorption. Helps you to keep focused, without the strong highs and lows you have with pure coffee.
Yerba mate is my favorite. I wish it was more popular in the US.
Switched to Mate or PG Tips tea as my morning drink, typically with loose leaf mate in a French press.
South American (Cruz de Malta , Taragui) are readily available on Amazon prime and much cheaper than the American brand Guayaki
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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.
How many is that per day? Like 20??
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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.
4-6 per meal, plus whatever you filled pockets with and drank in betwee How many is that per day? Like 20??
Most people wouldn't get the 4 meals a day served (breakfast, lunch, dinner, midrats) all at DFACs. I usually ate once or twice a day in the DFAC, and in the summer, especially if you didn't have a physically demanding job, it was hard to even want to eat once a day in 100-120F heat. I often ended up reverse-cycle so had dinner for "breakfast" and then maybe went to midrats or maybe didn't, usually was too busy.
Coffee from "green beans" (the starbucks knock-off) with a total of 6 shots of espresso into a regular-sized paper coffee cup worked pretty well, too -- I could leave the cup in my truck for a few hours and in 120F inside a closed car it would stay rather hot.
It was pretty amazing to me how different things were at different times/places within the war. There were huge bases (where I nominally lived) with 5mph speed restriction (you could actually be pulled over and ticketed; I was once!), strict "you must wear your reflective belt" policies, multiple swimming pools, world-class hospitals, almost walmart-sized PXes, on-base vehicle registration, etc. There were guys living 6-12 in a house out in the country, and people on long range patrols in trucks and (rarely) dismounted, etc. And everything in between.