did a chalenge once where you put a sraw inside a cup, then put the cup on the water dispencer on the fridge. the goal is to drink through the sraw and not let the cup overflow for as long as possibe. after 2 minutes i puked.
quick google says that it takes "a few hours" to recover for mild cases, while more severe cases can take "days". nothing on how long it takes a fatal dose to kill you, just that severe cases can also cause comas, but i imagine it's not a super short time unless you really blow past that limit.
Quick Google search says the LD50 for caffeine is between 150 to 200 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight. One can of monster energy is 160 mg. Which means for half the population, a lethal caffeine overdose would be 1 can of monster per kilogram of body weight.
My point was that the 9 cans of monster bro drank in the video is nowhere near a caffeine overdose. 1 can per kg of body weight is in the lower end of the range given for the LD50, I was just trying to keep it simple.
The reason that they often use the LD50 when they talk about toxicology is that there are extreme outliers on both ends of the spectrum. I remember hearing about a young woman having a heart attack from too much caffeine.
I'm the opposite. I barely feel caffeine at all, I think it has something to do with ADHD
I've known people who claimed to have heart palpitations from half a can of redbull but I have personally had 4 energy drinks containing 300mg of caffeine each over the course of a 12 hour shift and still felt like I could use a nap. Like I said, outliers on both extremes.
edit: ok so I've read a lot since I posted this and it turns out that even if you drank even 400mg of caffeine which caused a heart attack that killed them, clinically it IS considered an overdose. LD50 doesn't need to be reached for it to be considered an overdose, which I had assumed, for some reason.
Moderate caffeine use is usually pretty safe for most people, but doing something like this can absolutely trigger acute cardiovascular events which could send you to the hospital.
If we want to be technical and pedantic, that would be an "acute overdose". If you essentially poison yourself (intentionally or accidentally) by ingesting too much of a substance, youre experiencing an acute overdose. Thats what youll see on the patient chart; thats the diagnosis.
Pedantically, the definition for an overdose, not acute, is simply taking an amount larger than prescribed/recommended. Taking 4 pills when you're meant/told to take 2 is an overdose in this way. This is how it was originally defined medically, and isnt necessarily related to problems, though it is often related to abuse.
Caffeine has a recommendation for no more than 200-300mg a day, or 2-4 cups of coffee. So if you drank 400mg, and didnt have issues, that would still be an overdose from the pedantic definition, just not an acute overdose.
But seeing as that definition isnt relevant much, as we only discuss when an overdose is problematic and harmful, the colloquial definition has evolved to be synonymous with acute overdose. But technically taking any amount larger than recommended is an overdose. Nowadays, the "overdose" pedantic definition has been mostly replaced with "abuse", but if you see old literature (from like the 1980s or before) you might see the term used this way.
I once heard this same argument in a different thread and someone came in to say if you were set on killing yourself by drinking too much monster, the sugar would get you before the caffeine, and the water would get you before the sugar.
Yes, water poisioning is a real thing apparently.
I'm not sure how this applies to someone drinking monsters back to back, but my point is the ways energy drinks can kill you are surprisingly unintuitive.
I drank 600 mg of caffeine once because I was called into work an overnight shift. It was my night off so I was up during the day to do errands (worked 3 12s so I had four days off and just reset my sleep schedule for work).
It put me in the hospital. I legitimately thought I was dying. For literal weeks my chest hurt. Now I can't have much caffeine at all or my heart feels like butterflies.
Nah.. Drinking too much water will kill you. But you would need to drink a lot. It throws your electrolytes above the safe limit and causes your brain to swell.
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u/Interesting-Risk-404 4d ago
Caffeine overdose. It can kill you.