Energy Drinks and Your Kidneys

Makes its own gravy.

I was in the middle of a long day at the drive-in with some friends. In an effort to stay awake for the monster movies that were coming on later, we were all downing some energy drinks. In mid-slug, one of my friends expressed concern about what his energy drink habit was doing to his kidneys.


Short answer: Not much, except giving them more to filter.

Longer answer: The kidneys filter blood, and urine is produce from this filtrate. The filtrate passes through a number of tubes and membranes that make sure you’re keeping what you need to, dumping what you don’t, and staying at an appropriate pH.

The active ingredients in most energy drinks include B vitamins, amino acids (such as taurine and carnitine), and, of course, caffeine.

B vitamins are water-soluble, so any excess that you consume comes out in your urine (which will be bright yellow and *quite* fragrant). Water-soluble vitamins are small molecules, so they don’t pose a challenge to the filters in your kidneys.

Some energy drinks list their B vitamins as “B complex vitamins,” whereas others list their vitamins individually, which can be a little alarming if you didn’t spend a chunk of your teenage years in the vitamin aisle. If you see “nicotinic acid” or “nicotinamide” on the label, don’t get alarmed; those are forms of niacin (vitamin B3), and no one has been dipping cigarettes in your soda.

The amino acids are also something that regularly goes into the filtrate, so if you consume an excess of a particular amino acid, you pee it out. Some sources claim that taurine improves your body’s response to increased physiological stress (example: exercise), but you might do just as well to consume something that contains a whole *bunch* of different amino acids, like, say, a protein.

Lastly (but not leastly), we come to caffeine. While a great many drugs can harm your kidneys, caffeine, mercifully, is not one of them. If you’re a normal, healthy adult and don’t have any issues with your liver, kidneys, or heart, you don’t have to worry about caffeine poisoning unless you’re really going for it.

Long story short, energy drinks won’t mess up your kidneys; drink ‘em in good health.