Muscle & Fitness

No Bull: Humbled Booze?

July 2006

Think energy drinks can tame your booze and keep you sober? Think Again. According to Brazilian researchers, mixing liquor with energy drinks such as Red Bull and Rockstar won’t make you any less likely to fall on your face after a bender or spend the whole next day hung over on your couch watching football. In a study of 26 healthy men, there were no differences in coordination and visual reaction time after drinking vodka mixed with Red Bull compared to just vodka. However, volunteers rated themselves as less drunk after downing the Red Bull-vodka mixture vs. drinking only vodka. (The caffeine in energy drinks, which is the equivalent to a cup of coffee could be the reason for feeling less inebriated.) So even though energy drinks may help you stay on the dance floor all night (which, for all you bad dancers, may not be a good thing), with upward of 30 grams of sugar, a few too many could do serious harm to your buff-to-blubber ratio.