The article “Athletes and Energy Drinks: Reported Risk-Taking and Consequences from the Combined use of Alcohol and Energy Drinks” written collectively by Woolsey, Waigandt, and Beck was a study of the effects of drinking alcohol both combined and isolated with the effects of drinking energy drinks. The article’s main points are that: people that combined energy drinks with alcohol tended to drink less drinks, but more often, energy drinks have multiple herbs and ingredients that are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and that energy drinks are becoming too concentrated, having almost quadruple the amount of caffeine that they used to have. Seeing this article, it opened my eyes to how harmful energy drinks alone are, let alone mixing them with alcohol. The article is brought about in a manner that informs the reader properly, but confuses you with information at random. The information could be presented in a better way if you were able to pick the article apart and re-organize it. At first, the article states that athletes are a main focus of energy drink sales, then goes on to talk about how energy drinks are unsafe and back to athletes drinking the most energy drinks. The study is also a little complicated because it involves too many variables. It compares the effects on athletes, then on athletes that use energy drinks, then on athletes that mix energy drinks with alcohol at the same time, then on athletes who drink alcohol without mixing it with energy drinks. Somehow I doubt this is possible because the two are not mutually exclusive. First, I would like to know if they took into account the people who have ever drank energy drinks separately from alcohol. For example, if Johnny was an athlete and drank an energy drink before a game on Friday and then drank alcohol on Monday morning and didn’t mix it with alcohol. But then Johnny mixed energy drinks with alcohol the next Friday night but he didn’t have a game, therefore he didn’t exercise. Would Johnny then be excluded from the study or would he be clumped together with the group of people mix alcohol with energy drinks? The article didn’t explain whether this would be plausible or not. Also, what about people who do all of these things (alcohol mixed with energy drinks) but who are not athletes? These people could also exercise heavily but not be considered athletes. Personally, I know people that exercise and lift weights more often and to a higher intensity than some athletes. If this study wanted to view the effects on exercise, use of energy drinks, and alcohol combined then they should have included information on the exercise schedule of the athletes. I believe that
