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[C.Mongler]

That doesn't sound like a lethal dose of caffeine for a normal person.

Yeah, that's actually really not that much caffeine. We'll be generous and say 180 mg for the Dew (not sure what "large" constitutes exactly, but I went with 40 fl oz), 150mg for the latte, and probably around 100mg for the energy drink: a total of about 450 mg. Most low end cases I've read about of caffeine toxicity happen at about the gram mark, but they're usually even higher than that.

Don't get me wrong, 450 mg is still a lot of caffeine; I actually took a little over 500 mg in pills in college when I stayed up all night writing a paper and I literally just needed to stay awake through the lecture that morning to turn it in. It hurt like hell and I was hallucinating the entire lecture, and my heart was certainly taking a beating, but I didn't feel like it was a close call or anything. I feel like he probably had some sort of heart condition that compounded things. Poor dude, what a sad way to go

 

[Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!]

If that is a lethal amount of caffeine Dan Ryckert would have been dead a long time ago

 

[Kibbles]

Had to be an undiagnosed condition. That's not even a lot. My friends and I have all been on a lot more esp during the old system link days.

R.I.P kid

 

[Instro]

Are you guys even reading the article?

Davis' autopsy showed no undiagnosed heart conditions and that Davis was healthy and had no conditions that could have triggered by the caffeine intake. Also, no other drugs or alcohol were found in the teen's system, according to Watts.

 

[TwoDurans]

Oddly enough the coffee had the most caffeine in the trio. Energy drinks don't have a ton of caffeine, instead they're overloaded with Vitamin B. I believe Monster has half the amount a cup of coffee does.

 

[slit]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/05/15/health/teen-death-caffeine/index.html



Yikes. We're long overdue in the states for a crackdown on this kind of shit.

Crackdown on what? He probably had a heart issue he didn't even know about. If someone died from eating almonds because of a nut allergy, should we crackdown on almonds?

Are you guys even reading the article?

Fine, show me the evidence of teenagers dropping dead on a regular basis from caffeine then I'll say regulation is needed.

 

[Zaru]

A macro solution would be pushing school hours forward so these kids aren't sleep deprived. 7am start times are crazy.

Lots of teenagers lack sleep because they're up doing shit on the internet, gaming, partying etc. They're willingly sacrificing it. Changing school hours wouldn't do much.

 

[franzer]

Echoing a lot of what people said above, but that's really not that much caffeine, definitely not enough to kill someone without an underlying issue. Having said that, kids these days can't appreciate a good cup of black coffee...or 3. Sitting in a diner and putting a pot of shitty coffee away with a friend is something lost on the young generation.

 

[mike6467]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/05/15/health/teen-death-caffeine/index.html



Yikes. We're long overdue in the states for a crackdown on this kind of shit.

I'm sure we'll see more regulation given this administration.

Spoiler

/s

All it takes is a look at the supplement industry to see that the whole thing is a joke. Even certain powerful chemical stims can still easily be found and bought online (see DMAA, which is considered horrible by the FDA and tested for by the NCAA/military and banned from sale on military exchanges).

I definitely like stims for gym use and have a high tolerance, but there's stuff out there like yohimbine that will fuck my shit up. We're talking vomiting, the shakes and a major increase in heartrate where I can feel my pulse throughout my entire body. The effects were similar to what I experienced when I came off painkillers cold turkey. That's what happens if I take the (recommended) half can of Redline (the one with yohimbine, can't remember what version it is).

Whether or not blanket bans should be implemented is one thing, but something needs to be done because it's not just stimulants, but all kinds of other chemicals that are getting thrown into common fitness/workout products with limited research to back them up or attest to any level of quality or safety. Not to mention the budding nootropics scene.

Edit: Not making a case for caffeine regulation, but just a look at a lot of products which are starting to cross over from what used to be hardcore gym products into mainstream energy drinks, which are a natural progression from generic coffee.

 

[DiamondDog74]

Can't tell you how many people order large coffees with two or more shots of espresso at least twice a day at my store. This shit is nuts. Hello heart problems.

 

[Mexican Sting]

Yeah, that's actually really not that much caffeine. We'll be generous and say 180 mg for the Dew (not sure what "large" constitutes exactly, but I went with 40 fl oz), 150mg for the latte, and probably around 100mg for the energy drink: a total of about 450 mg. Most low end cases I've read about of caffeine toxicity happen at about the gram mark, but they're usually even higher than that.

This is why I wish we knew what the energy drink was. A Redbull has 111 mg, but a Redline can have as much as 316 mg.

 

[EviLore]

Caffeine crackdown long overdue? What?

Coroner's report:

http://metro.co.uk/2017/05/16/boy-d...-energy-drink-and-large-mountain-dew-6640250/

Coroner Gary Watts said that physicians on his staff determined that Cripe died from a ‘caffeine-induced cardiac event causing a probable arrhythmia.’

However, he added that his death was not a caffeine overdose.

He added that had it not been for people seeing him drinking the high volumes of caffeine, the cause of his death is likely to have gone unnoticed.

‘This is not a caffeine overdose,’ Watts added: ‘We’re not saying that it was the total amount of caffeine in the system, it was just the way that it was ingested over that short period of time, and the chugging of the energy drink at the end was what the issue was with the cardiac arrhythmia.’

‘We’re not trying to speak out totally against caffeine,’ Watts said. ‘We believe people need to pay attention to their caffeine intake and how they do it, just as they do with alcohol or cigarettes.’

The Mayo Clinic said in a March report that up to 400 milligrams of caffeine a day ‘appears to be safe for most healthy adults.’

According to caffeineinformer.com, a McDonald’s latte has 142 milligrams of caffeine, a 20-ounce Mountain Dew has 90 milligrams, and a 16-ounce energy drink can have as much as 240 milligrams.

Not a caffeine OD, apparently not an undiagnosed heart condition, and his death would not likely even been linked to his caffeine consumption that day except for the witness accounts of him chugging an energy drink, because he didn't have a dangerous amount of caffeine in his system.

There's nothing to really glean from this story unless you weren't aware that caffeine, while ubiquitously consumed and generally safe, is still a dose-dependent stimulant, and that energy drinks can have a lot of caffeine in them. Just a tragic outcome from a highly unusual arrhythmia trigger.

 

[whytemyke]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/05/15/health/teen-death-caffeine/index.html



Yikes. We're long overdue in the states for a crackdown on this kind of shit.

A crackdown on what, stupidity?

 

[SillyEskimo]

I guess "teen dies from heart condition" wasn't catchie enough.

 

[richiek]

I just had my second coffee of the day. Looks like I'll die if I have a third.

 

[NealMcCauley]

Are you guys even reading the article?

I wonder if there's something about how the drinks mixed in his system.

 

[Sulik2]

I'm a very strong proponent of regulating the food and drink industry severly, but the poor kid had a a heart condition. The drink makers aren't to blame here.

 

[Not Spaceghost]

That doesn't seem like much caffeine though...if it was then buffets where you can get free soda refills would have a lot more fatalities.

 

[entremet]

Lots of teenagers lack sleep because they're up doing shit on the internet, gaming, partying etc. They're willingly sacrificing it. Changing school hours wouldn't do much.

You had more fun that I did in HS.

I was working a PT job and doing AP courses

I barely gamed and partied lol.

 

[RumblingRosco]

Are you guys even reading the article?

Thousands or millions of people drink that much caffeine daily and don't have an acute mortality. Making a sweeping change banning 3-5 servings of caffeine in a 2 hour period seems highly reactionary and probably unnecessary given this is just one example.

 

[YuriLowell]

That doesn't sound like a lethal dose of caffeine for a normal person.

It's not. I drink more than that on a daily basis.

 

[Chuckl3s]

I guess Red Bull can give you wings. RIP

*rim shot*

There has to be something else medically wrong with the kid. I've had a lot more than that and I'm an overweight midget.

 

[Aselith]

That caffeine informer said I can drink 150 cups of coffee. I guess it's time to step my game up!

 

[Slayven]

Caffeine crackdown long overdue? What?

Coroner's report:

http://metro.co.uk/2017/05/16/boy-d...-energy-drink-and-large-mountain-dew-6640250/






Not a caffeine OD, apparently not an undiagnosed heart condition, and his death would not likely even been linked to his caffeine consumption that day except for the witness accounts of him chugging an energy drink, because he didn't have a dangerous amount of caffeine in his system.

There's nothing to really glean from this story unless you weren't aware that caffeine, while ubiquitously consumed and generally safe, is still a dose-dependent stimulant, and that energy drinks can have a lot of caffeine in them. Just a tragic outcome from a highly unusual arrhythmia trigger.

Sounds like one of those freak one in a million deaths

 

[Moofers]

So many of you are out of your minds. I don't know why I expected reasonable replies on a forum full of the target audience for those drinks.

When I say crackdown I don't mean having armed troops storming every 7 Eleven and confiscating all the Red Bulls. I'm talking about changing the way our society thinks it's completely fine for teens to chug those things all the time. It's fucked. A teenager's body doesn't need caffeine in those quantities. Fuck, nobody does. If you want to argue that, you're out of your mind.

 

[ThreePiMatt]

These seemed like regular stories years ago around the time Red Bull was initially getting popular. You'd see stories of high school or college athletes pounding a bunch of Red Bulls before a game and dying on the field. Wonder if it became a regular enough occurrence that it wasn't newsworthy anymore.

 

[Instro]

Caffeine crackdown long overdue? What?

Coroner's report:

http://metro.co.uk/2017/05/16/boy-d...-energy-drink-and-large-mountain-dew-6640250/






Not a caffeine OD, apparently not an undiagnosed heart condition, and his death would not likely even been linked to his caffeine consumption that day except for the witness accounts of him chugging an energy drink, because he didn't have a dangerous amount of caffeine in his system.

There's nothing to really glean from this story unless you weren't aware that caffeine, while ubiquitously consumed and generally safe, is still a dose-dependent stimulant, and that energy drinks can have a lot of caffeine in them. Just a tragic outcome from a highly unusual arrhythmia trigger.

Seems like it could just be similar to one of those stories about people running themselves into the ground, long term gaming sessions with no sleep, whatever. Minimal sleep, high caffeine & sugar intake, etc., combining to put stress on his body/heart.

Thousands or millions of people drink that much caffeine daily and don't have an acute mortality. Making a sweeping change banning 3-5 servings of caffeine in a 2 hour period seems highly reactionary and probably unnecessary given this is just one example.

I've made no such suggestion, just pointing out that people should read the article before making statements about how "it must have been a pre-existing condition".

 

[chadderbox77]

It's lack of sleep combined with caffeine. I had an overdose on caffeine in 1998 and almost died. I had and have had no heart issues since, although I do believe I slightly fried my cns. I was working at a job in the a.m. then working a second job in the evening and then started repoing cars after that and getting about 2-3 hours of sleep a night. It quickly caught up with me.

 

[Slayven]

So many of you are out of your minds. I don't know why I expected reasonable replies on a forum full of the target audience for those drinks.

When I say crackdown I don't mean having armed troops storming every 7 Eleven and confiscating all the Red Bulls. I'm talking about changing the way our society thinks it's completely fine for teens to chug those things all the time. It's fucked. A teenager's body doesn't need caffeine in those quantities. Fuck, nobody does. If you want to argue that, you're out of your mind.

Jesus

 

[NOLA_Gaffer]

Welp that makes me worried about my coffee consumption which is normally an 8oz cup every hour.

I drank an entire 12-cup coffee pot worth one night while marathoning Luke Cage.

I wonder how close I brought myself to death.

 

[Arcteryx]

Crackdown? lmao. That's not even a lot of caffeine.

 

[Ripenen]

Thousands or millions of people drink that much caffeine daily and don't have an acute mortality. Making a sweeping change banning 3-5 servings of caffeine in a 2 hour period seems highly reactionary and probably unnecessary given this is just one example.

Sounds like the kid drank these drinks in rapid succession. Plenty of people consume that much caffeine daily but usually not in such a short period of time. Also the folks who do drink that much caffeine are probably likely to have built up a tolerance over a period of years of consuming caffeinated drinks.

 

[Goldenroad]

*stares at third cup of coffee*

worth it.

 

[YuriLowell]

So many of you are out of your minds. I don't know why I expected reasonable replies on a forum full of the target audience for those drinks.

When I say crackdown I don't mean having armed troops storming every 7 Eleven and confiscating all the Red Bulls. I'm talking about changing the way our society thinks it's completely fine for teens to chug those things all the time. It's fucked. A teenager's body doesn't need caffeine in those quantities. Fuck, nobody does. If you want to argue that, you're out of your mind.

NeoGAF is certainly not a target audience for Monster, Rockstar, Redbull.

 

[C.Mongler]

This is why I wish we knew what the energy drink was. A Redbull has 111 mg, but a Redline can have as much as 316 mg.

Yeah, I'd have to imagine it was something heftier than just an 8 oz can of Redbull, but the article seems scant on those details.

 

[ElectricBlanketFire]

So many of you are out of your minds. I don't know why I expected reasonable replies on a forum full of the target audience for those drinks.

When I say crackdown I don't mean having armed troops storming every 7 Eleven and confiscating all the Red Bulls. I'm talking about changing the way our society thinks it's completely fine for teens to chug those things all the time. It's fucked. A teenager's body doesn't need caffeine in those quantities. Fuck, nobody does. If you want to argue that, you're out of your mind.

Using the term "crackdown" implies that something should be done via the law or some other extreme measure.

Most of "society" would not think it's completely fine to have that much caffeine.

 

[entremet]

So many of you are out of your minds. I don't know why I expected reasonable replies on a forum full of the target audience for those drinks.

When I say crackdown I don't mean having armed troops storming every 7 Eleven and confiscating all the Red Bulls. I'm talking about changing the way our society thinks it's completely fine for teens to chug those things all the time. It's fucked. A teenager's body doesn't need caffeine in those quantities. Fuck, nobody does. If you want to argue that, you're out of your mind.

It's sad what happened, but this is an outlier case. No need to get so upset if people aren't agreeing you.

 

[slit]

So many of you are out of your minds. I don't know why I expected reasonable replies on a forum full of the target audience for those drinks.

When I say crackdown I don't mean having armed troops storming every 7 Eleven and confiscating all the Red Bulls. I'm talking about changing the way our society thinks it's completely fine for teens to chug those things all the time. It's fucked. A teenager's body doesn't need caffeine in those quantities. Fuck, nobody does. If you want to argue that, you're out of your mind.

Thank you, I like being out of my mind. Excessive consumption of energy drinks may indeed be a problem for people but it's not necessarily the caffeine that is causing the problem in that equation. Those drinks have a lot of in stuff in them. The caffeine he consumed was not that high.

 

[Dishwalla]

In the military you regularly see people drink three or four Red Bulls or Monsters or whatever in a day. I've even seen people slam two 5 Hour Energy shots back to back. People ingest an obscene amount of this stuff, it's gross.

 

[RecRoulette]

I did this trifecta in college at 19 and still fell asleep during class. Looking back it's crazy the stuff I drank trying to stay awake while going to school full time and working 40-50 hours a week.

 

[radios shipping overview]

That doesn't sound like a lethal dose of caffeine for a normal person.

Different people have differing sensitivity to caffeine.

That's enough to turn me into a nervous jittery wreck if it wouldn't kill me first.

There should be warning labels on energy drinks, bigger than the 6-point text near the UPC that some of them have.

 

[DeathyBoy]

That sounds pretty low to be honest. I used to drink 2 cans of Monster a day though. Then I questioned why the fuck I'm doing it. Still miss the Ripper flavour

I figured it was gonna be 3 energy drinks. Does a latte or dew even compare to them?

I used to drink four double vodka and red bulls on a night out (in addition to other drinks.) I have slight hypertension. It's just a crap shoot.

 

[see5harp]

Yea this kid had to have some undiagnosed heart condition. That's not even that much caffeine.

 

[rtcn63]

That doesn't sound like a lethal dose of caffeine for a normal person.

To be fair, studies have shown that something like a 500mg dose can cause problems for some people. But overall, caffeine is probably of the safest and most beneficial non-prescription drug in the first world.

 

[erlim]

Honestly I didn't know this was possible and I'm surprised I didn't die in High School or College. I'm sure I've drank this much caffenie.

 

[Mammoth Jones]

RIP to dude.

That being said I had a large coffee, 2 energy drinks and bout to grab a red-eye. Dont need regulation. What is there to regulate? How is it going to stop anything we supposed to waste tax money tracking how many energy drinks people buy? It'd never work without an entire government division to oversee it.

He was just sensitive to caffeine and/or guzzled that shit fast. People need to be aware of that. And not do it as they can die.

 

[sirap]

RIP. I have a pretty weak heart and drinking two cans of Redbull + Coke definitely pushed it to the edge.

 

[SecretMoblin]

I wonder if tolerance plays a role, after being instructed to stop all caffeine intake in HS I started again after ~8 months and a single cup of coffee made my heart start going crazy, sweats, the whole shebang. What would be a normal amount for most regular caffeine consumers could have been especially potent for him.

Nowadays several cups of coffee before noon helps me to be minimally functional.

Reminds me of HS students who collapse and die during basketball/football games and the reactionary responses to those tragic but freak events.

 

[Nabbis]

Im probably talking out of my ass but either it was something else that the coroner did not notice or he had some CYP polymorphism. It's not statistically probable to have such effects from caffeine.

 

[rtcn63]

I wonder if tolerance plays a role, after being instructed to stop all caffeine intake in HS I started again after ~8 months and a single cup of coffee made my heart start going crazy, sweats, the whole shebang. What would be a normal amount for most regular caffeine consumers could have been especially potent for him.

Reminds me of HS students who collapse and die during basketball/football games and the reactionary responses to those tragic but freak events.

Nowadays several cups of coffee before noon helps me to be minimally functional.

You can actually (mostly) reset tolerance by going off of caffeine for like a week. I would routinely do it after hitting 3+ servings in a day. It's just not that hard of a drug for most people.

If caffeine were to disappear from the world, productivity would nosedive.