Originally Posted by BetsyofSS

I had my first energy drink about 3 weeks ago and I try to have one every day. I feel like I'm on a smooth sailing ride for the rest of the day, focused, alert, attentive, and energetic enough to live my normal routine. The day I had two I couldn't sleep but otherwise it does not interrupt my sleep.

I am so delighted to find another PD person who has the same reaction. It's like a drug how good I feel and knowing it may soothe PD takes the edge off of the guilt at picking up an addictive substance. Thanks!

I am 57 and was diagnosed not quite 2 years ago.



sailUOTE=lurkingforacure;681955]Yesterday quite by chance my husband was offered and accepted one of those 5-hour energy drinks. I think it's actually called "5 Hour Energy Drink"!
At any rate, he said he felt the best he had felt in a loooong time, giving his symptoms an improvement rating of 20-30%, which is huge (and he is very analytical, so I think his is a pretty fair assessment). It also alleviated, pretty much immediately, his constipation problem, which we had been grappling with for about a week, within 15 minutes (yes) of drinking the drink. Placebo? We don't think so either.

So I dutifully got online and looked up what's in this thing. TONS of B3, B6,
B9, and B12, citicholine, some other stuff....but what caught my eye was this: "L-phenylanaline". I know this is a big component of aspartame which we avoid at our house like the plague, so I was worried, but then realized that this substance by itself, when not combined with the other ingredients in aspartame/nutrisweet, may not be the neurotoxin I thought. In other words, standing alone, l-phenylanaline is not neurotoxic.

What's more....soccertease has a post today under the fava bean thread which discusses how fava beans contain, yes, l-phenylanaline, precursor to dopamine! We were wondering what made the energy drink so effective-was it the B vitamins? the caffeine (they say it has only one coffee cup worth of caffeine, so probably not), what? My bet is on the phenylanaline.

Has anyone had one of these things and experienced a similar effect? We went out and bought a case of the things today, you can get them everywhere, we got ours at CVS.

PS-Had horrible sleep, though, so I don't know if that's related to the energy drink or not...our sleep is pretty lousy most nights anyway. I'll report back as we consume more energy drinks. Love to hear anyone's experiences or thoughts about these drinks.