Caffeine poisoning – not just for coffee drinkers
-
- July
- 17
More and more teens and children are suffering from caffeine poisoning.
A recent study by Richard Church, a toxicologist at University of Massachusetts Medical School, tracked 4,600 caffeine-related calls to poison control throughout the nation in 2005.
According to a report on the study by WCVB-TV (via KETV), half those calls involved those either 19 and younger or younger than 19, I couldn’t seem to find exactly which it was (if anyone knows, please lemme know).
According to KETV’s report:
WCVB discovered extra caffeine is being added to gum, mints, candy bars, even lip balm. A small bag of one caffeine-infused snack food called Engobi contains as much caffeine as two Red Bull drinks, but consumers would never know that by reading the label. Companies often don’t specify how much caffeine individual products contain. And other ingredients may add an extra punch.“Yerba mate, colo nut, cocoa. These are all things that have caffeine in them,” said Church.
WCVB discovered these ingredients are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.
A friend who writes for Associated Content found that poison control calls in Indiana were indeed on the rise, leaping 50 percent just since 2005.
So what are we to do?
We never let Rafael or Markus have caffeinated drinks and we minimize the amount of chocolate they eat (as much for the sugar as for the caffeine, honestly), though Rafael can have one glass of chocolate milk each day if he wants it.
I know from personal experience that caffeine can dehydrate you and if you’re drinking a lot of Diet Coke, for example (not that I know _any_one who does that), you need to make sure you’re drinking water, too. During the summer, that’s especially dangerous.
Here’s the common symptoms in babies, according to the National Library of Medicine/National Institutes of Health include:
• Muscles that get very tense, then very relaxed
• Nausea
• Rapid, deep breathing
• Rapid heartbeat
• Shock
• Tremors
• Vomiting
Though in most cases, everything turns out OK, if someone had a pre-existing heart condition (known or unknown), a caffeine overdose could be extraordinarily dangerous.
Photo from Stock Exchange.Â
This entry was posted
on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 7:24 am by Amy Vernon.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Print
| 
Email
Thank you so much for giving a link to my article about Indiana. I stay home with my son who is special needs and your shout out is much appreciated.
Also, you’ve written a super article here and my local pharmacist did acknowledge that parents whose kids have ADD or take ADD meds or have seizure disorders could be increasing risks and dangers. Of course, that does not substitute for medical advice but it is what I was told by a pharmacist.
Cool blog.. I’m bookmarkin it now.. be back later