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A “fit and well” man was rushed to the hospital after suffering a stroke caused by blood pressure that was “sky high”
After he was discharged, his blood pressure began to rise again, and upon a follow-up visit, he shared with his doctors that he consumes 8 energy drinks a day
The man was drinking more than 3 times the recommended amount of caffeine
A “fit and well” man’s habit of downing 8 energy drinks a day caused him to have a stroke — and he’s left with lingering damage.
A 54-year-old warehouse worker arrived to the emergency room with numbness, weakness on his left side, and ataxia (trouble with balance and movement), according to a case report in BMJ Journals. He was “normally fit and well,” the report says — except for his blood pressure.
“His blood pressure was sky high — about 254 over 150 millimeters — yet when you looked at him you’d never know it, because he looked so well. That’s why we call hypertension the silent killer,” Dr. Sunil Munshi, a consulting physician at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust in the United Kingdom, and senior author of the report, told CNN.
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Stock image of a patient in a hospital bed.
Normal blood pressure for a man his age is less than 120 over less than 80, per the American Heart Association. His numbers are classified as a “hypertensive emergency.”
The blood pressure had caused “a stroke in the deeper part of the brain, the thalamus, which explains the unsteadiness,” Munshi told the outlet. The man, a warehouse worker from the Sherwood district of the English city of Nottingham, was admitted and treated with five different medications to make his blood pressure drop.
After he was discharged, his blood pressure began to increase again, leaving doctors baffled — until, as Munshi shares, he told doctors about his energy drink habit.
“Each day he consumed eight highly potent energy drinks to stay alert for his job — two cans at four different times during the day,” Munshi told CNN. “Each of the drinks contained 160 milligrams of caffeine. Suddenly the diagnosis was clear.”
The Mayo Clinic says that up to 400 milligrams of caffeine a day “seems safe” for most adults; the patient was drinking more than three times that amount.
Too much caffeine can increase your risk of developing cardiovascular disease, according to a study from the American College of Cardiology.
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Stock image of the tops of energy drinks.
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He stopped drinking the energy drinks (the specific brand was not identified in the study), and his blood pressure returned to normal. But the lingering impact of his stroke and energy drink habit remain, he told his doctors, per CNN.
“I obviously wasn’t aware of the dangers drinking energy drinks were causing to myself,” he said, explaining he’s “been left with numbness [in my] left hand side hand and fingers, foot and toes even after 8 years.”
As Munshi explained, there are other ingredients in energy drinks that can contribute to health problems. “Energy drinks that contain caffeine plus taurine produce significantly higher blood pressure than caffeine alone,” he said. “They also contain high levels of glucose — we know sugar damages the blood vessels in diabetes which leads to heart damage.”
Read the original article on People