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Something seems wrong here. I mean, I think drinking Mt. Dew, coffee and an energy drink all in a couple of hours sounds incredibly unhealthy...and not to mention, gross...but people do that kind of thing all day, every day. I could see him feeling bad...heart racing, headache, stuff like that...but actually dying? It just doesn't seem right.
When I drank Cokes like that, I felt like I was dying. Several doctors warned me that if I didn't stop, it would kill me. That's when I finally stopped, and I started feeling a lot better. It's also very addicting, and easy to become dependent on it for energy. Caffeine is a pretty strong drug.
The article I read said he had a McDonalds Latte (142mg caffeine), a "large" Mt. Dew (lets say 24 oz, thus 108 mg caffeine), and an unspecified energy drink; for the sake of estimation, lets say it was one of the very popular Monster energy drinks (160 mg caffeine)
That would make for a total consumption of 410 mg of caffeine in one sitting.
The LD50 (a statistical dose which will kill 50% of ingesters) of caffiene is 150 mg per kg of body weight.
Assuming this young man was of average size, say 65 kg (about 145 lbs), he would have to have ingested 9,750 mg of caffeine in one sitting, or about 24 times as much as he took in. That would be about 8 lattes, 8 large Mt. Dews, and 8 monster energy drinks. And then, statistically, he would have only a 50% chance of actually dying.
I think there is another factor at play here. An undiagnosed heart problem, for example.
1.) LD50 tests are conducted on Laboratory Mice which may react far differently to any given substance than a Human would (there is no cross species "Susceptibility" to any given toxin/poison/venom/drug...each creature reacts differently to any substance)....
2.) There is (likely) a huge amount of variation in how one reacts to a substance even WITHIN the same species....For example I am highly allergic to penicillin, but no one else in my family is.....My Brother gets the Flu Virus all the time, but I haven't gotten it in years (neither of us get the yearly vaccine) etc etc etc....What hurts one person may not hurt the other and vice verse....Some people can't even eat 1 peanut without nearly dying while others could eat 1000 in one sitting and be fine....
Two things to consider:
1. 145lb for a 16 year old is pretty heavy imo, especially if they are still growing and under 6 feet. I don't know if that's the average weight in the US, but it would make him overweight at that age for a kid. I think I was around 110-120lb at that age, but I was never fat, so I wouldn't know.
2. Maybe statistically it is 50% chance of dying at the dosage you indicated, but maybe he was part of that 0.01% statistic for much smaller doses, aggravated by the fact that he was a teenager and not an adult. (I am assuming the study you are sighting was conducted on adults). Out of hundreds of thousands people who drink a lot of caffeine daily, he just happened to "win" that low chance caffeine overdose probability lottery.
145 lbs isn't that heavy if the kid is remotely athletic. I was 145 lbs when graduating high school only because I didn't spend much time lifting weights (mostly calisthenics, sprinting, jogging etc). Every football player, basketball player, most of the soccer players, baseball players etc., were AT LEAST 160 in my H.S. I knew kids that didn't even play sports weighing in at 175 lbs and could easily bench their own body weight and squat nearly double that. There were some real hosses that checked in around '6-0" tall and 220+ lbs of muscle. Heavyweights on the wrestling team!
Kids that age should just drink water, exercise plenty and get some sleep. Seriously, teenage sleep is like the best sleep ever if you get the full amount needed. Kids ingest way too much crap and I'm not even talking about food. You've got high school kids chugging all sorts of protein powders and shakes when their kidneys can barely process that crap.
The vast majority of Americans are addicted to caffeine, but it's rarely discussed in that context. There's a lot of it in coffee, tea and many "soft" drinks, as well as in chocolate. So many seem to be bragging, when they tell you they must have a couple of cups in the morning, before they can start their day.
1.) LD50 tests are conducted on Laboratory Mice which may react far differently to any given substance than a Human would (there is no cross species "Susceptibility" to any given toxin/poison/venom/drug...each creature reacts differently to any substance)....
Fair enough, but the 400mg of caffeine ingested by the boy who died is an amount consumed by literally millions and millions of Americans every day. Many people consume more than 2-3x that much on a daily basis.
This leads me to believe the boy had an underlying sensitivity or other health factor that contributed to his death.
LD50 is a factor that aids in the interpretation of the potential effects of the drug, No one suggested that it is a hard and fast rule. Most people who have even simple adverse reactions to caffeine consume many times the dose that killed the boy in question.
Fair enough, but the 400mg of caffeine ingested by the boy who died is an amount consumed by literally millions and millions of Americans every day. Many people consume more than 2-3x that much on a daily basis.
This leads me to believe the boy had an underlying sensitivity or other health factor that contributed to his death.
LD50 is a factor that aids in the interpretation of the potential effects of the drug, No one suggested that it is a hard and fast rule. Most people who have even simple adverse reactions to caffeine consume many times the dose that killed the boy in question.
Totally agree 150%. When I was not even legal drinking age I developed a bad coffee habit because of my line of work and shift (graveyard). I used to drink two gallons of coffee per night. I know this because we had a one gallon coffee percolator that I would fill, brew and drink every night twice. After work when I was off, I'd then go and drink a two liter bottle of diet coke between getting home and going to bed, every night. Never a problem. In fact, the only pain and suffering I had ever incurred was when I stopped drinking coffee and diet coke cold turkey. Had a migraine for an entire week.
Totally agree 150%. When I was not even legal drinking age I developed a bad coffee habit because of my line of work and shift (graveyard). I used to drink two gallons of coffee per night. I know this because we had a one gallon coffee percolator that I would fill, brew and drink every night twice. After work when I was off, I'd then go and drink a two liter bottle of diet coke between getting home and going to bed, every night. Never a problem. In fact, the only pain and suffering I had ever incurred was when I stopped drinking coffee and diet coke cold turkey. Had a migraine for an entire week.
The fact that you had withdrawals symptoms when you stopped, is telling. Drugs affect different people different ways. Either way caffeine is a powerful, and does affect people.
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