Who’d have thought that pumping cans of cheap and colorful caffeine bombs into every gas station in the country could be bad for public health?

Most people probably at least suspect that energy drinks aren’t the best thing to put in our bodies. Still, a recent preliminary study by the American Heart Association found that the energy drinks’ impact on the human heart over time is worse than you might imagine.

The new research took a look at over 28,300 health events reported to the US Food and Drug Administration between 2017 and 2025. Broadly, researchers found that energy drinks and heavily caffeinated beverages carry a link to serious heart conditions which is far, far stronger than that of non-ultra-caffeinated beverages.

More granularly, the study found that energy drinks were cited some 11 times more often in cardiac arrest reports compared to products without caffeine. And while caffeine was a key ingredient found to contribute to adverse health events like heart attacks and ventricular arrhythmia, energy drinks are often slurries of methylxanthines, sympathomimetics, yohimbine, and other poorly-understood ingredients.

As the researchers found, documentation of serious medical episodes involving mention of energy drinks and other stimulating beverages are about four times more likely to include cases of arrhythmia compared to medical reports that don’t. The study’s abstract also points to a rising number of cases reported by healthcare professionals involving irregular heart rhythm or sudden cardiac death in otherwise healthy young adults who regularly slurp down energy drinks.

Crucially, the findings point to a high number of adverse heart impacts in young adults in the 18-to-34 age range, for whom heart conditions are generally rare. US adults in this age group tend to be the predominant consumers of energy drinks, which could reflect the fact that consuming high amounts of energy drinks is, in fact, rough on your ticker.

Still, the study’s authors point out that any causal link between high energy drink consumption and poor heart health has yet to be proven, as the body of research on the topic is relatively young.

While the research has yet to be peer-reviewed, it may nonetheless point to a growing public health crisis — not one stemming from a lack of resources, as is very often the case, but from too much of a very bad thing.

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