Drinking an energy drink now and again isn’t good for you, but it isn’t the worst thing you can do.
But according to Charlotte Aston, there’s a point where it gets excessive.
Charlotte Aston was found collapsed in her home at the age of 18. When she was taken to the hospital, doctors found that her pulse had risen to 247 beats per minute.
The technical term is “supraventricular tachycardia, and it refers to a heart rate of over 100 beats per minute.
Over the weeks, she had to be kept in the hospital to bring her heart rate down. Her heart rate would get out of control if she sneezed, coughed, picked something off the ground, or put herself through too much stress.
But after two years, it got so bad that she had to have heart surgery—called laser ablation—in order to correct her irregular heartbeat.
During the surgery, she technically “died” eight times. The surgery requires shocking the heart to stop the irregular signals, and each time she was shocked her heart stopped.
What caused her life-threatening heart rate spike? Energy drinks. Her doctors went through her diet and activity habits and concluded it was the only explanation.
She said she’d drink an energy drink every day, usually a Red Bull, Monster, or Relentless.
This habit, she said, ruined her life. The heart problems she’s had to deal with have forced her to give up her job, kept her from learning to drive, and prevented her from attending university.
“What I went through was hell,” Charlotte told the Daily Mail. “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”
Now 23, she says she had no idea that thiswas what would derail her life. “All I wanted was to have an energy drink to get me through my shift—but it has messed up my whole life.”
Her surgery made her give up her job as a teaching assistant, and she has lost friends. Now she tells her story to other children to prevent the same thing from happening to them.
