road warningIf you are going to use a food supplement (includes energy drinks), physiology altering substances, or mood altering substances (includes legal over the counter or prescription substances and illegal substances}, please be aware of the hazards. Hazard information is available through Internet searches and the FDA warning label (when applicable). Definitely, please make sure your children are aware of these hazards and preferably before they are likely to be exposed to them.

There is no doubt that many people rely upon certain substances to improve their health, focus, energy, metabolism, and for many other purposes. The use of such substances should be considered with care. The old saying of, “Too much of anything, even a good thing, is a bad thing,” is the core consideration of concern for this post. An example of this concern is the energy drink. Take a look at a few different brands of energy drinks. You will see quantities, in excess of the daily recommended allowance by 8,000 to 16,000 percent. Even if the substance is water soluble (meaning that the next bathroom trip flushes any of the substance in excess of what the body can use) this kind of abuse of the body will not go unnoticed, especially in long term use. Vitamin B12 is one such high energy substance. It is water soluble. Excess amounts do flush from the system. So what is the point of putting such ridiculous amounts of this substance into an energy drink? Not only is it hazardous to drink a single serving of these drinks a day on a regular basis, many people drink multiple servings of energy drinks daily, which is expressly warned against on the label. Even when the body flushes a substance, it still has to go through a certain number of organs and 8 to 16 thousand percent of a person’s daily allowance will tax these organs enormously. When talking about liquids, those substances travel through the liver and the kidney. The body adjusts, after a while, to a “new state.” This applies to pain, pain killers, anti-histamines, poisons, and any other substance introduced to the system. Once the body has accepted a “new state,” getting the same result takes more than it did before, thus encouraging us to abuse our bodies even more. Any takers for an early requirement for kidney dialysis or organ transplant? Anyone? Anyone? Not exactly something that a person thinks of, when reaching for something on the store shelf. I cannot say that I am any smarter than anyone else in regards to these physiology enhancing substances. The siren call lured me, while completing my bachelors and masters degrees. How else does a person work full time, do school full time, and manage to do a part time job too? Clearing the affects of the energy drinks and dependency on them from my system will take a while. Whether the dependency is psychological or physiological should not matter (hopefully). I did manage to find one that had no more than 300% of the daily requirement for anything though, which was actually much more effective and had fewer negative side-effects than other brands.