Energy drinks can give you the necessary boost you need, especially when you have deadlines to meet or have to work overtime. For some, drinking a cup of coffee alone won’t do. It can keep you awake, but you can’t always rely on it to keep you alive and kicking the whole day.
For Mary Allwood, drinking as many as 20 red bulls a day was part of her daily routine for four years. But that changed when the energy drink she relied on so much caused her health to take a sudden turn for the worse, and she wound up in the hospital where doctors found that her liver was so damaged, they were convinced she was an alcoholic. It was extremely swollen and had lumps on it. Read on for more details.
Energy drinks have become a mainstream staple, especially in the workplace.
They’re just as popular as coffee, but it turns out that you can consume too much, which has ill effects.
Mary Allwood drank up to 20 cans of Red Bull a day for four years.
She started with just two a day until it became an addiction. She’s a full time mother but was eventually spending thousands of dollars a year on Red Bull. She wasn’t taking in any other liquids.
According to her, she would “feel awful” if she didn’t have it.
She didn’t drink it for energy anymore, but she longed for its taste and fizz. She avoided other vices but couldn’t resist her go-to energy drink. Further, her consumption was so much that she even lied about having a restaurant to avoid questions from the store’s clerk.
She gained weight, going from a size 16 to a size 24, and even heart palpitations a year in didn’t stop her. In Novemember 2015, however, it was a severe pain in her side that made her decide to go to the hospital.
The doctors found out that her liver was twice the normal size and had two fibrous lumps on it.
It was just what she needed to scare her out of her addiction. She began a diet and replaced her Red Bull intake with water intake. It wasn’t easy – she mood swings and shake for a month as withdrawal symptoms from the energy drinks. She says she’ll never go back now.
It turned out her daily consumption of caffeine was equivalent to 16 cups of coffee while her sugar intake was equal to 17 Mars bars.
It was the excessive sugar consumption that wrecked her liver. It led to fat deposits in her liver which damaged the liver cells.
(via Daily Mail)
Allwood’s experience proved that just about anything taken in excess is bad for your health. Fortunately for her, she was able to address the problem before it became fatal.
