Why do energy drinks (Rockstar, Relentless..) help me

Hello, I am new to the forums.

I was diagnosed with UC almost 2 years ago and to begin with I found it unbearable. I would be eating and drinking a lot of what is considered good for you for around 5 months and found nothing was working.

One morning, when I was tired and drained of energy, I went against all logic and decided to drink an energy drink. Soon, thereafter, I noticed that it had alleviated some of my symptoms associated with UC. Ever since then I've been drinking around 2 cans per day, on average, and I believe I feel better for it.

I would like to know if someone can hazard a guess as to why this seems to be working for me? Additionally, I drink a couple of beers a night, eat processed / ready made meals and remain sedentary most of the time. Perhaps, with the energy drinks / alcohol it is all psychological? I know alcohol and caffeine can either stimulate or depress signals in the brain, and this could in fact be masking what I should be feeling?

To conclude: I'm essentially defying all logic, and whilst I don't feel great, I do feel better now than when I first started out with UC and was following the guidelines.

I'd be interested to know what people's thoughts are on this, and why what I'm doing at the moment is making me feel better than I did at the start. It doesn't make a lot of sense but I am being genuine.

Perhaps one of these ingredients in Rockstar is helping.
Old Mike

Besides caffeine and sugar, Rockstar Energy Drink contains a variety of herbs, including panax ginseng, ginkgo biloba, milk thistle extract, and guarana seed. The amount of guarana used to be higher, but "after being criticized for including guarana once health concerns about the herb were publicized, the amount in the drink was significantly reduced."[13] It also includes 1000 mg of taurine

I gave up using logic to figure out why my gut tolerates some foods/drinks and not others after years of keeping track. My "approved by my gut" food/drink list does not fit any name diet.

If it works for you be happy.
When I eat/drink something my gut dislikes it is obvious through symptoms. Non-UCer's have this reaction too just not to my extent.

Why are you sedentary? Being more active will improve your overall health and prevent more ill health (heart disease, etc).

I regularly enjoyed those indulgences during my 2.5 year remission without a single consequence. If a beer bothered me then I'd expect some response during that long timeframe, but there was none. I was a perfect 1 bm a day pooper.

Am I flaring now? Yes, as a consequence of being only on Remicade at this flare's onset. I had quit 6MP prior to this flare and that's the direct cause of this flare, being under medicated for my uc severity. 6MP slowly leaves the body over a series of months, and right at the expected month mark I flared (textbook case). My diet has remained consistent long before and even during this flare, it's a constant, including pizza and beer. It is football season, afterall, and they are a requirement.

As much as it surprises/puzzles you, diet has no impact on my uc, and there is no link here. Uc has 57 varieties (Heinz ketchup reference), and our individual uc varieties are very, very different.

NiceCupOfTea said...
One possibility is that you weren't getting enough calories from the healthy diet. If you were flaring badly at the time, you also probably weren't absorbing many of the nutrients and so they were going to waste.

I generally do better on a diet like the one you described than a healthy one. I don't drink energy drinks, but I do drink quite a bit of tea and coffee. A bland, low-residue diet is just easier on my guts. A few veggies won't kill me, but if I kept on eating salads, crunchy veg etc. I'd soon be in a world of hurt. Also, sometimes I lose my appetite and it's easier to get in the calories with high-calorie processed food.

It's my opinion that most (but not all) cases of IBD don't have much connection to diet - an unpopular opinion round this way. There is no evidence that a diet of pizza and beer in your 20s predisposes one towards getting UC; if anything, it seems to be the healthier types who seem more likely to get it (at least going from this board). If a crap diet or overweight/obese BMI doesn't predispose one towards getting UC, then I don't see why a healthy diet would make a massive difference afterwards. There's always exceptions of course, but you don't seem to be one of them. And I definitely wasn't.

We could totally be friends. We can hold hands and dance around a bonfire made from copies of Wheat Belly and Paleo Mama. 😆😂

I'm very cynical about special diet for IBD, if it works great but for the most part, if you have imflamtion, you have it. I try to tell a friend this but she feels it necessary to "educate" me. Lol, she didn't appreciate it when I pointed out that the Paleo diet is based on people whose life expectancy was 30-35 years. There is nothing wrong with a Paleo diet but it irked me to see in the intro part, the author go on about how immusupressents are over prescribed. That lost me, right there. And then another stupid diet, claiming that by lowering the acidity in your blood, it will reduce inflammation. Lol, it actually said to not worry about the science of it all, "trust us" , "it works". And don't get me started on the leaky gut thing....Oy vey. Right, my colon ain't leaky, it expediates matter at the speed of the Hadron Collider at times, so it's pretty leak proof. 😐 GMO's? They've been lifesavers in some parts of the world besieged by drought, especially in 3rd world countries. There's really not a lot of evidence that they cause harm.

I guess diets don't make money based on just being a healthy lifestyle, it needs a gimmick to catch people. IMO, the biggest benefactors of all these diet crazes is the food industry.

You ain't alone in your unpopular opinion. 👍