Why Do Energy Drinks Make Me Tired?

Energy drinks are power beverages containing multiple stimulants like caffeine, taurine, sugar, artificial sweeteners, vitamins, and amino acids.

An excessive amount of these chemicals can have a contrary impact on your body and will make you tired. Instead of giving you a power boost, these beverages will make you exhausted and tired if you regularly intake these chemicals in an unrestricted amount.

As these drinks are energy boosters, people like the impact these energy drinks have on them. Energy drinks are brain boosters as well. These drinks develop measures of brain capacities and mental performance like improving memory and concentration. 

Consuming these energy drinks can be best before driving on long routes, before a workout, and when your body starts to lose energy at any time. One should drink an energy drink 30-60mins before needing an energy boost. 

Statistics show the leading energy drink brands in the United States in 2021, based on sales. In that year, the leading energy drink brand in the United States was Red Bull, based on guaranteed sales of about 3.26 billion U.S. dollars. That’s huge!

Can an Energy Drink Make You Tired?

Yes, though energy drinks are consumed to improve the energy levels of a person sometimes these energy drinks can also cause fatigue and result in making you tired.

Most energy drinks contain caffeine, sugar, herbal ingredients, vitamins, electrolytes, and amino acids. The main ingredients that instantly improve your energy levels are caffeine and sugar.

In case you are a regular buyer of caffeinated drinks, you realize that the energy can just keep going for a short period.

The impact can keep going for an hour or a couple of hours however, a short time later you will feel dormant, restless, crabby, exhausted, and may think that it is hard to take rest.

Let’s perceive how these ingredients make you tired.

Caffeine

Energy drink can’t be an energy booster if it doesn’t have caffeine in them. Caffeine is a stimulant used for increasing activity in your brain.

Caffeine has its perks but it can cause problems too. This is the most important ingredient of an energy drink. As a functioning ingredient caffeine does all the hard work by expanding execution and mental sharpness.

Caffeine is the most popular tonic that helps to boost energy levels quickly. But it sometimes makes you tired as well.

If you have been drinking caffeinated drinks in excess for quite a while, the outcome will be reversed. Mostly a small can of energy drink contains around 80mg of caffeine.

Daily almost up to 400 milligrams (mg) of caffeine appears to be safe for healthy adults. Caffeine upsets your body’s regular cycles. The perfect measure of caffeine can make you concentrate yet an excessive amount might make you unsteady and tired.

Too much caffeine can cause many side effects like:

• Restlessness or fatigue
• High blood pressure
• Dehydration
• Heart palpitation
• Insomnia
• Increased heart rate

Sugar

When you consume an energy drink, sugar is the second active ingredient that helps to improve your energy levels. Energy drinks are formed with sugar. Just like caffeine, sugar can also make you tired when you take an excessive amount.

An energy drink contains almost 26 g of sugar. Most energy drinks contain up to 14 spoons of sugar.  Energy drinks contain different forms of sugar like sucrose, glucose, fructose, and corn syrup. Although sugar gives an instant boost to your energy levels in a short period it will cause a crash in energy and activeness.

Side effects of excessive sugar intake:

• It can cause heart cardiovascular diseases and gout.
• An excessive amount of intake can cause inflammation.
• It can cause weight gain.
• It increases the danger of obesity.
• Excessive intake of sugar can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes.

As the nutritionist, Natsuko Kasai says in his book.  “Sweet Things are bad for the brain”

Can energy drinks have the opposite effect?

Yes, energy drinks can also have the opposite effects on your body. The time you consume an energy drink, caffeine takes no more than 10mins to enter your cardiovascular system.

Within a few minutes, you will start to feel more alert and attentive. Caffeine causes you to feel more stimulated by influencing your mind, while sugar keeps you physically active.

But these energy drinks can have opposite effects as well. Let’s suppose, you are in the middle of the day and your energy level starts to get down. You immediately consume an energy drink to give the fastest boost to your energy level.

But within a few hours of consumption, you start to feel tired, exhausted, and sleepy. Instead of making you more energetic, the drink makes you even more tired.

These diverse symptoms are dependent on how long and how much caffeine is consumed by a person. That is because it can be your habit to drink energy drinks in excess for a long time, so these drinks will start to have opposite effects on your body.

Caffeinated beverages might show positive helpful consequences for practice execution in different game exercises. While caffeinated beverages may help the execution but conceivable medical issues have been recorded, especially among kids and young people.

There can be several reasons why energy drinks have the opposite effect on your body. Let’s have a look!

Sugar Habituation

The main ingredient of energy drinks is sugar. Sugar can have the opposite effect on your brain abilities. It weakens your focus on the specific goal. The increased sugar level in a person can lead to depression.

When you drink an energy drink, you feel active and better but for a short period. In the long run, sugar worsens the mind’s ability to fight stress and depression. Sugar initiates every one of the provocative cycles in the body.

Chemical Reaction

Chemicals used in energy drinks help to boost your energy levels. Caffeine and Taurine are examples of these chemicals.

These are naturally occurring chemicals but people like to have them as a supplement to give a quick boost to their energy levels.

However, taking too much caffeine can have the opposite effect on your body. If you take it on the daily basis it will eventually stop working for your body rather you will have opposite effects. This will cause sleep disturbances, tiredness, and headache.

Dehydration

Energy drinks are loaded up with many chemicals which include taurine, caffeine, guarana, creatine, ginseng, different vitamins, amino acids, and carbohydrates.

The amalgamation of these chemicals can cause dehydration as caffeine is a diuretic. Frequent urination can cause dehydration in your body. There are many side effects caused by dehydration. It can cause severe headaches, dizziness, sleepiness, dry mouth, and low blood pressure.

So, it can make you tired thus the energy drink can have the opposite effect on your body.

Can Caffeine Have the Opposite Effect?

The answer to this question is “Yes”. Individuals who consistently drink espresso and other caffeinated drinks can foster resilience to it. Tea, coffee, and other caffeinated drinks are known to support your energy levels.

But they can likewise have the contrary impact by prompting bounce-back weakness after the caffeine leaves your body’s system. The caffeine actuates diuresis. All in all, it causes you to need to pee.

Indeed, it’s ideal to go on vacation and stretch your legs as you work past your sleep time, however upsetting your work process for a speedy race to the washroom isn’t the best approach to do it.

Irritating by these effects, causes a much more serious issue for your wellbeing, in that time you ease yourself, you’re losing water. As you become increasingly dried out, your blood thickens and moves even slowly through your veins.

This implies that your body is utilizing oxygen at a slow rate, and consequently, it becomes drowsy. In this way, caffeine can have opposite effects on your body

Let’s discuss some reasons why caffeine has the opposite effect.

Tolerance to Caffeine

With time, eager and regular consumers might develop a caffeine tolerance. Caffeine keeps adenosine from restricting receptors. Nonetheless, to battle this, the body might start to deliver more adenosine receptors. Almost 15 days of regular consumption of caffeine can make you encounter fewer caffeine impacts.

Caffeine Affects the Adenosine

Adenosine is a compound created in the central nervous system that controls your sleep plan. At the point, when you drink tea, coffee, or some energy drink, your body ingests the caffeine in it, and when this caffeine arrives in your mind, it adheres to your adenosine receptors.

Adenosine levels increase during the day to keep us conscious. Around evening time, they start lessening to assist us with sleep. Adenosine does this by restricting unique receptors in the cerebrum that sluggish movement and cause laziness.

Whenever caffeine is used, the significant degrees of adenosine can cause outrageous weariness. Since caffeine ingests rapidly, a few groups might feel these antagonistic impacts 45 minutes after utilization.

Caffeine can block the impacts of adenosine, which is a thing that causes you to feel attentive. Nonetheless, when the caffeine gets off, your body might encounter a development of adenosine that hits you at the same time, which is the reason caffeine can cause you to feel tired.

Your Genes are an Effecting Metabolism

Another reason why caffeine is having an opposite or zero effect on your body is that your metabolism is affected by your genes. It disturbs the process of converting what you eat or drink into energy and so caffeine doesn’t help you to boost your energy levels. Numerous things can impact your metabolism.

• Age
• Body Size
• Physical Activity
• Gender

These are some examples of the factors that can impact your metabolism. There is another factor that many don’t consider is genetics. This can affect how the body measures caffeine, making it inadequate for a few or excessively viable for other people.

These are a few reasons why caffeine has the opposite effect on your body. If you do not consume caffeine on the daily basis, you will not get addicted to it and your body will get energy from caffeine.

How do I Get More Energy from Energy Drinks?

People consume energy drinks to boost their energy levels. If you are feeling down at the time when you need to be active, you will certainly find a way to get energized, and the fastest way to get energy is to drink an energy drink. But different factors impact the boost and you feel even more exhausted after consuming an energy drink.

Especially when you take a lot of caffeine and other chemicals through energy drinks on the regular basis, the energy drink will stop helping you boost your energy levels.

Caffeine and sugar are the two important ingredients that can have an impact on your metabolism. So, to avoid different factors that stop energy drinks to give energy, you can adopt different tactics.

Stay Hydrated

An energy drink can cause dehydration as it contains different chemicals like caffeine and taurine. Caffeine is a diuretic that causes your body to make more urine than usual.

So, it can cause dehydration in your body which can make you tired. To avoid this, drinking plenty of water alongside an energy drink can help you stay hydrated.

Staying hydrated can make you more focused and alert. Energy drinks start to work for your body and you can get more energy out of an energy drink.

Don’t Consume Energy Drink with an Empty Stomach

Though energy drinks are power packs for your body as they contain different vitamins. But these drinks can’t be replaced with food and meals. A healthy diet is necessary with the intake of caffeine.

Drinking energy drinks on an empty stomach can be dangerous for your body. Drinking energy drinks with an empty stomach can upset the element of hydrochloric acid, which helps you digest your meal.

So, your digestive system gets affected and it leads to many problems like weight gain. This upsets your energy levels as well. So, you must not consume energy drinks on empty stomach to get more energy from energy drinks.

Avoid Over Consumption

As the main ingredient of energy drinks is caffeine. So, when you consume an energy drink, caffeine works more to give you energy. But the regular consumption of caffeine will lead you to its opposite effects.

Excessive caffeine intake will make you addicted to it and that can cause many problems in your body. Caffeine stops positively working for your body.

It doesn’t provide you energy rather it makes you tired and sleepy and you end up having no energy from an energy drink. So, it will be beneficial for you to have a balanced amount of caffeine in your body.

These are some techniques that help you get more energy from energy drinks. If you want to get more advantages from your energy drink, you can keep these techniques in your mind.

Wrap Up

Energy drinks are consumed for a quick energy boost in the body. The additional chemicals fight with your body system and make you more alert, more attentive, and more focused.

However, the overconsumption of these energy boosters can have multiple negative and opposite effects on your body system. Excessive use of energy drinks will lead to many health issues.

Some energy drink brands do not list caffeine as an ingredient of their drink but remember caffeine is the main component of an energy drink.

Overconsumption of caffeine can cause many heart problems, anxiety, depression, and restlessness. An average consumption must not exceed 2 cans of energy drink a day. A balanced intake of additional chemicals might not cause any harm to your body.