I almost died today. Twice

[thenonsequitur]

1) Caffeine has mild effects on blood pressure and heart rate in nonhabitual users. In habitual users it has little to no effect. There has been no clear link made between caffeine and heart disease, in fact recent studies suggest that drinking coffee may be good for your cardiovascular health (among other things). For comparison, there's about as much caffeine in a 16oz Rockstar as there is in an 8oz cup of drip coffee.

Whatever you say. But I too ended up in the emergency room on a caffeine overdose though (from just 200 milligrams, and combined with whatever else in an energy drink).

2) The only other stimulant Rockstar contains is sugar. Like Red Bull, it also contains taurine, but that's not a stimulant and nobody knows what the hell it does. The energy drink makers claim that it "enhances cognition" because it's found naturally in high concentrations in the brain, but scientific studies have only shown is that it might lower blood pressure.

I wasn't talking about rockstar in particular. I said I don't know about rockstar. I was talking about energy drinks as a general class.

3) Amino acids are what we're made of, and ingesting some of them is essential for your health. You can probably overdose on them, but you would have to ingest massive quantities of concentrated supplements. Rockstar contains two amino acid derivatives taurine and L-carnitine. L-carnitine is thought to be good for you, but there's not that much of it in Rockstar.

I'm fully aware of what amino acids are. My point about amino acids, I will say again, is that (as large amounts in supplements, not smaller amounts in food) that they may cause problems with heart function. There isn't enough research on them to be conclusive.

But this whole argument about amino acids was a tangent. I agree that it's very possible that the amount of amino acids in energy drinks is completely harmless. Again, my main point was about the caffeine content.