Just five alcoholic drinks a week can reduce sperm quality and quantity.
“High levels of alcohol intake do appear to be associated with changes in sperm and semen that may affect fertility…”
Professor Chris Barratt, Professor of Reproductive Medicine, University of Dundee
Alcohol and caffeine together are a risky mix
The high dose of caffeine in energy drinks offsets the sedating effect of alcohol. This makes your brain think you are less drunk than your body feels. This obviously leads to highly risky and dangerous behaviours in a headspace where you cannot make intelligent assessments or decisions. This stimulated drunkenness leads you (and mostly younger people who can least afford to), to drink more than they would normally. Dr. Kent A. Sepkowitz, a physician at Weill-Cornell Medical College in New York, wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association “Unintentional caffeine overdoses have resulted in serious illness and rare deaths from caffeine poisoning. Caffeine poisoning has only recently been characterized”.
Just one of the problems here is that the synthetic additives in energy drinks can interfere with the body’s ability to metabolize caffeine, and this leads to increased or prolonged levels of caffeine in the blood. In 2012, the FDA reported that Monster energy drink may have been involved in five deaths and “the five-hour energy drink” loaded with caffeine, may have played a part in 13 deaths and 33 hospitalizations over the past four years¹.
Why are they still on sale then?
- Money, money, money and greed.
- Sales of energy drinks in the U.S. are well over $10 billion per year.
What about manliness and reproduction then?
The manlier you are, the more you drink, goes the cliche, except I thought manliness was connected with his incredible ability to procreate…? Even modest alcohol consumption lowers your ability to make babies. Researchers found “the higher the tally of weekly units, the lower was the sperm quality in terms of sperm count and the proportion of sperm that were of normal size and shape”. Even 5 drinks a week caused sperm degradation².
So drinking energy drinks and lots of alcohol actually delivers less energy, more confusion, an upper and a downer, a stimulant and a depressant, a higher risk of death and hospitalisation, and a diminished ability to procreate. Ha!
GOLDEN Rule 1: Be Prepared and Control your Environment
GOLDEN Rule 2: Deal with the Body you have
GOLDEN Rule 4: Give up what Weakens You
GOLDEN Rule #9: Awareness Around Alcohol (AAA)
GOLDEN Rule 10: Consider Coffee Carefully (CCC)
GOLDEN Rule 20: Find your H.A.P.P.Y. Paradigm
References:
- ABC News Medical Unit release, December 31, 2012.
- Study on 1,200 men, aged 18-28, after medical examinations from 2008 and 2012, as published in the BMJ Open, October 2014.
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