Hacker News Reader

Comment by cdr | Hacker News Reader

Caffiene doesn't do it for me anymore, so I've been experimenting with energy drinks. They seem to work better, but generally taste awful (Red Bull is the prime offender).

View on HN

Maybe it's my old age (32), but large doses of stimulants end up reducing my productivity over the span of a few days. I'm much better off with a trickle of caffeine via green tea, and getting a good nights rest, rather than going on work binges and crashing afterward.

It's not your "old" age. I'm 23 and I absolutely agree. See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=55250

I never understood why redbull tastes the way it does. It reminds me of bad bubble gum. Other energy drinks seem to have gone in the same direction? Is it required for energy drinks to taste the way they do?

It is probably the taste of Taurine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurine).

Taurine was originally extracted from bull's balls and hence when you drink a RedBull, you are giving a bull a ... lets say, doing a bull a favor :-)

(Taurine is not extracted from bull semen nowadays, of course ( probably coz this is not scalable :-p ) and it is claimed that the whole Tauine-Bull thing is a myth... but myths are fun to propagate)

http://www.google.com/search?q=taurine+semen

Hm. Didn't know it struck anyone else the same way. What my father does is fills one of those giant AMPM Big Gulps (or what the fuck ever they're calling them) with a mix of all the different energy drinks they have. Guess what that giant plastic mug always smells like to me? Bad bubble gum.

Try the Rockstar Juiced series. They're 50-70% fruit juice and don't taste like bubble gum. My only concern is that they contain sucralose, a substance I generally avoid.

Almost none of the energy drinks have enough of their extra ingredients to actually do anything... ginseng and taurine can be stimulating, but you need to take a lot more than they put in Red Bull.

If you're willing to branch out into other stimulants, I'd strongly recommend Kratom, feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Most energy drinks contain high doses of B vitamins. B vitamin deficiency causes fatigue, weakness, and depression. I'm not sure if mild B vitamin deficiency is common or if very high doses do the opposite, but I've noticed a bigger mental boost from some energy drinks than from a similar amount of caffeine without the vitamins.

Taurine a stimulant? I thought that's a relaxing aminoacid they put there so you won't get too nervous with all that caffeine.

Sorry, taurine is not actually a stimulant even though it is commonly referred to as such.

http://www.erowid.org/ask/ask.php?ID=3016

Reply on news.ycombinator.com