Short course: Energy drinks up blood pressure

Researchers examined the QT interval of 93 people who had just consumed one to three cans of energy drinks. The QT interval describes a segment of the heart’s rhythm on an electrocardiogram; when prolonged,it can cause serious irregular heartbeats or sudden cardiac death. They found that the QT interval was 10 milliseconds longer for those who had consumed the energy drinks. “Doctors are concerned if patients experience an additional 30 milliseconds in their QT interval from baseline,” said Sachin A Shah,lead author from the University of the Pacific in Stockton,California.

The researchers also found that the

systolic blood pressure,the top number

in a blood pressure reading,increased an average of 3.5 points in a pool of 132 participants. “The correlation between

energy drinks and increased systolic

blood pressure is convincing and concerning,” Shah said.

Garbled texting as a sign of stroke

Slurred and incoherent speech is one of the classic signs of a stroke. But new research finds that another symptom may be garbled and disjointed text messages,which could provide early clues to the onset of a stroke.

In Detroit,doctors encountered a 40-year-old patient who had no trouble reading,writing or understanding language. His only consistent problem was that he had lost the ability to type coherent text messages on his phone. An imaging scan showed that he had suffered a mild stroke.

The case represents at least the second instance of what doctors are calling “dystextia”. In December,a report in The Archives of Neurology described a 25-year-old pregnant woman who sent her husband a series of incoherent text messages. Doctors found that she had also been experiencing weakness in her right arm and leg,and that she had earlier had difficulty filling out a form at her obstetrician’s office.

The findings suggest that text messaging may be a unique form of language controlled by a distinct part of the brain. And because texts are time-stamped,they may help doctors determine when a patient’s stroke symptoms began.