“Quit things in the order they’ll kill you.”

To Celsius or not to Celsius?

Some months ago I was headed on a hike with my friend Nora in the Angeles forest. It was hot and we were looking for a waterfall, and the hike we chose had a beautiful natural pool. It was just a good 3.5 miles of moderately difficult terrain before then, and we were both feeling low. Nora said she knew how we could change that — which sounded, of course, like she was about to slip out a baggie of coke from the heel of her beige HOKAs. Instead, she pulled a u-ey into a Mobil station and came out with two thin white beverage cans. Energy drinks. I made a face of disgust but took a few sips. Then a few more.

Cut to: the two of us jogging on the trail, adroitly discussing politics, film, attachment theory, bathing joyfully beneath a waterfall, then returning to the car with life force to spare. Celsius! A wonder drug!

As a result of this profound caffeinated experience, I bought my very first case. Now, energy drinks were a popular alternative in my recovery community, particularly when I first got sober in 2013. I would find myself at what I believed to be devastatingly lame “sober events” where youths would be rippin’ JUULs and downing Monsters until they were speaking in tongues. I always had a bias against these drinks, and found them, ironically, too unhealthy to imbibe. (To stave off my binge drinking habit, I stuck with the classic: Nan Goldin’s let’s-ignore-the-cause-of-my-dad’s-emphysema cocktail of coffee and cigs.)

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Post Super Hike, I was excited to find an energizing beverage that made me feel less mentally tweaky than coffee. But my excitement was short-lived. After a high-flyin’ week of drinking them daily, it caught up with me. I drank one before I went for a jog then got mild…heart palpitations. This seemed a rather extreme effect for a beverage so ubiquitous and easy to access, but I didn’t want to give up on my new bev so easily, so I went searching for some reassurance.

I discovered, unfortunately and unsurprisingly, that while there appear to be some obvious perks to these drinks (Redbull, Monster, Rockstar, etc.) like energy boosts, increased alertness, and positive impact on workouts — drinking them in excess (which varies depending on the individual) is not without some potential side effects. Anxiety, depression, stomach issues, mood swings, tooth decay, heart palpitations, and high blood pressure, to name a few. Generally, the FDA says you should be fine if you have one to two servings of an energy drink a day, or up to 400 mg of caffeine. But like anything, tolerance for caffeine varies widely person to person.

There have been a surprising amount of studies on energy drinks (Is that really the best use of research funds? I digress.) including one that correlates an increased risk of stroke or heart issues to their consumption. Another study is literally called The Dark Side of Energy Drinks: A Comprehensive Review of Their Impact on the Human Body, which concluded there were a “significant prevalence of adverse effects, particularly on the cardiovascular and neurovegetative systems” — and called for more restrictions around their sales. A study out of John Hopkins found that energy drinks were linked to unhealthy/high risk behavior in adolescents. (Which may be true, but it reads a little like the Dad in Footloose who outlawed dancing or when people used to blame video games for school shootings.)

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Finally, I took it up with Nora MacLeod, the friend who introduced me to sweet Celsius — and also happens to be an acupuncturist and herbalist at Tapestry Acupuncture & Integrative Medicine. She says that, in general, she’s all for moderation with most things, but that one time, she did have way too much Celsius and hallucinated, which is both wild and actually listed as a potential energy drink side effect. I asked what she hallucinated. She declined to comment.

Her take: “Caffeine can be useful, it’s a tool. An energy drink is a yang stimulant — meaning it’s active, upward moving, hot energy. When you have excess amounts of Yang, it can deplete your Yin energy, which is what roots you to the ground, and roots your mind in calm. Habitual use of energy drinks can deplete that Yin energy and cause an excess of Yang energy. That’s when you might get irritability, insomnia, palpitations, hormonal disruption, dry eyes, insomnia, and anxiety.”

To her point about moderation, there is a saying in recovery: Quit things in the order they’ll kill you. When I think back at those kids and their Monsters at my “sober events,” it makes sense why they were using a less imminently destructive substance to get weird or to feel differently — or even just to stay awake. But there is too much info indicating habitual long term use of energy drinks just isn’t that great for the ticker, among other things, and I felt that pretty immediately. Personally, the cons outweigh the pros for my sensitive self as a daily beverage. But for the occasional boost before a hike on a hot day? I don’t hate it.

Quick fixes have their time and place, but, as Annakeara’s essay makes clear, they have their limitations: Heart palpitations and hallucinations are kind of a no-go zone for us, personally.

Protein-maxxing, the trend of quadrupling-down on protein consummation, falls adjacent, if not directly into, the quick fix category. If you’ve been in the world recently, you know that protein is everywhere — Khloe Kardashian’s Protein Popcorn, frosted lemonade protein soda, protein Pop Tarts, we could go on; we’re in our “proteinization of food” era, where leaving something unfortified or un-boosted is akin to leaving money on the table.

In a great article from Taste, Andrea Hernández, founder of Snaxshot, the popular food forecasting IG and Substack, calls protein a new buzzword that’s “increasingly devoid of meaning.” It has joined the pantheon of food/diet/health trends past and present, from Atkins and prebiotics to keto and GLP-1s.

Of course, protein itself isn’t the problem; it’s a macro-nutrient we need in large amounts to be healthy. But, spoiler alert: There is such a thing as too much ‘tein. Among other health risks, overtaxing your kidneys is a main concern (turns out “foamy urine” can be a sign of kidney damage, so that’s a visual we now can’t stop thinking about). Also concerning is the highly-processed nature of many forms of supplemental protein (you can’t get swole on steaks alone). We learned about the breakthrough ingredient in the wildly popular, absolutely-brimming-with-protein David bar — EPG, a modified plant fat that moves through your digestive system mostly undigested — from this episode of The Daily, and, is it just us, but doesn’t that description give you the ick?

It’s a wild world out there, and protein is everywhere. Stay safe, consume wisely, and if your pee looks a cappuccino, you should probably call your doctor.

Hope the rest of your Sunday is more special occasion fancy latte than gas station non-dairy creamer.