Originally Posted by
cardiomd
For the vast majority of people they are safe to use occasionally, meaning no immediate harm would come of the use, but I would say they are far from "good for you." They are extremely low pH (very bad for teeth), high in sugar, and the huge doses of taurine and niacin, although your body can process them, are not good for your overall health. Ironically most are relatively low in caffeine compared to a large coffee, but some of them do have significant amounts.
If daily Rockstars could cause heart attacks in normal people there would be a LOT more heart attacks - I have patients that consume quite amazing amounts of these drinks. Likely those vulnerable to the effect, or were going to have a heart attack anyway, the drug could accelerate this or bring out bad effects such as arrhythmias, particularly in high doses. If you have a family history of heart disease or are sensitive to the effects I'd just avoid it.
In fact I advise my patients to avoid the whole craze, which IMO is mostly marketing hype toward a macho demographic.
Thanks as always for this. My GP is a cardiologist and a dear friend whom I trust. She lets me eat pretty much what I want (which is about half pizza, burgers and pasta, and the other half salads and other green veggies. I'm on half a Crestor once a week and modestly exercise which has kept my HDL at 60 and my LDL at 60. She insists on good dental hygiene and keeping my sugar intake low which has my C reactive protein (CRP) at around 0.5 because she thinks dental hygiene and low sugar helps to reduce the body's inflammation. What do you think about targeting those three items for heart health?
Carl