The vending machines and coffee shops littered around campus can be extremely tempting. I mean, why drink water when you can have something that tastes so much better? Well, here’s why: unfortunately the drinks that so many college students are “addicted” to are detrimental to your health.
Gatorade
Gatorade is a substance that is meant to bring back electrolytes in the body post-exercise; however, more people than just gym rats and athletes drink Gatorade, and an overuse of Gatorade can actually cause some not-so-good health effects.
According to the Livestrong website, Gatorade can actually cause a variety of negative health effects, from weight gain to high blood sugar and even vitamin toxicity.
The reason for this is because, according to Calorie King, there are 29.5 grams of sugar, 232 milligrams of sodium and 105 calories in a small bottle of Gatorade.
As for the vitamin toxicity, this happens because Gatorade has a lot of fat soluble vitamins and cannot be released quickly enough once the amount of them is too high, according to the Livestrong website. The website says this toxicity can cause fatigue, blurred vision and even nausea.
Coffee
This is a big one. It keeps us college students awake when we need it; therefore we drink it all the time. Because of this, this is a big one that people have an “addiction” to; however, there are some interesting and negative side effects to drinking too much coffee. According to the Medical Daily website, coffee overload can lead to things like anxiety, psychosis, muscle spasms, hearing things and later on in life, osteoporosis.
Once you look at the contents of the drinks, it’s easy to see how too much could be a bad thing. According to Calorie King, one medium, iced, white chocolate turtle mocha from Caribou with 2 percent milk has 76 grams of sugar, 400 calories and 6 grams of fat. Not to mention the caffeine, which is where a lot of these negative effects can come from, according to the Medical Daily website. Also according to that website, some scientists have said they believe osteoporosis can be caused by caffeine and while it doesn’t affect all parts of the skeletal system, it had an effect on what is considered to be the strongest bone in the body: the femoral shaft.
To address the hearing things symptom, this is another side effect of the caffeine. According to Medical Daily, if you are consuming more than five cups a day, that is too much and some of these negative effects may start to affect you. All in all, an addiction to coffee can make you crazy, and not just in a theoretical sense.
Energy Drinks
After you pulled an all nighter, coffee just isn’t going to cut it, and that’s saying something, so you drink an energy drink. Those can have serious health effects on your body. According to the SFGATE website, one side effect to these energy drinks can be gastritis.
According to the SFGATE website, gastritis can mean pain, bleeding and even developing ulcers in your stomach or intestinal tract. More minorly, it can also result in heartburn, diarrhea and vomiting, but that’s not fun either. It may taste good going down, but it may not even stay down. In fact the caffeine level is so high that it can cause heart palpitations. Not to mention, in one can of Red Bull, there’s 38.3 grams of sugar, according to Calorie King.
So what’s the best option? It looks like drinking water is better and significantly less stressful to your body. Need to wake up? Drink water and hydrate yourself without the sugar rush.
