That Neuroscience Guy - Neuroscience Bites-Energy Drinks

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

In today's Neuroscience Bite, we discuss the neuroscience behind consuming energy drinks. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria, and in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to another Neuroscience Bite. On the last episode of the podcast, I talked about how your brain gets energy, and we focused primarily on glucose. And a question that comes up naturally, and I've been asked a lot is, well, what about those energy drinks? Energy drinks that give you just tons of those simple carbohydrates, and they're full of caffeine and taurine as well, and sugar and all these things. Well, one of them is supposed to give you wings.

Well, are these energy drinks really good for brain function or do they enhance brain function? The answer is no. There was one highly debatable study done almost 20 years ago now that showed that a certain energy drink enhanced brain function, but that study was just plagued by bad science. The sample size was small. It wasn't done in a research lab. It was actually done by the industry itself. And it was cited as proof that these energy drinks increase brain function. And the simple answer is no, they do not. There is an array of studies now looking at the impact of energy drinks on brain function. And I was reading one just this morning.

It's something that came out recently. And they basically showed that levels of neurotransmitter in the brain were decreased following consumption of energy drinks. So that's the opposite of what you want. If you think about what we've talked about in the past, neurotransmitters are supposed to be good and they are good for neural function. So if a drink decreases the level of neurotransmitter, that's really bad. What scared me more with this study, and it was done in an animal model, but there's studies done in human models, is they looked at long-term exposure to energy drinks, and they found degeneration of nerve cells, degeneration of the nuclei themselves. They saw abnormalities in neural structure. And this, of course, has negative impacts on an array

of brain functions. And in humans, these long-term studies haven't really been done properly. But in these animal models, it's quite scary. And the studies in humans are no better. They find that the use of energy drinks is actually associated with a decrease in brain function. So yes, if you put in a thousand milligrams of taurine, there will be a sharp increase in alertness or if nothing else, just sort of awakeness. But there's actually a negative impact on brain function. So if you're looking to improve your brain function, complex carbohydrates, get glucose the natural way. Energy drinks are not the answer.

Anyway, that's another neuroscience bite. As ever, check out the website thatneuroscienceguy.com. You can email me ideas or comments, thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com or follow me on Twitter at thatneuroscienceguy. DM me your thoughts. And last of all, thanks for listening to the podcast and please subscribe. My name is Olive Craig Olson, and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll see you soon for another full episode of the podcast.