This woman proved drinking 28 cans of Red Bull a day might not be the best idea

By Fusion Staff  |  August 5, 2015 | 5:53pm
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It’s going to be tough to find a bigger fan of Red Bull than Lena Lupari of Newtownabbey in Northern Ireland. Lupari reportedly downed 28 cans of the energy drink every day for five years, the Daily Mail reports. This habit, she claims, has caused brain swelling and a hospital visit, and might be turning her blind (!):

‘I used to drink 28 cans of Red Bull in a day and I’d only have a meal at night but it would usually be something fast-food like a takeaway or a packet of pasta,’ she said.
‘I’d been suffering from migraines and headaches for about five years but I just ignored them and took painkillers.
‘Then my vision went and I couldn’t even lift my head off the bed and I ended up in hospital for six days.’

Lupari apparently collapsed in June from drinking too much Red Bull and her debilitating vision, her doctors told her, could be caused by the weight she gained from ingesting roughly 3,000 calories a day from energy drinks. From the the Telegraph:

Doctors then revealed that her wright-gain had led to a condition know as Idiopathic intracranial hypertension, a condition which causes the brain to swell because of high pressure in the skull.
Common symptoms include severe headaches and changes in vision due to swollen optic nerves.

All said, the math, like Lupari’s vision, seems a little fuzzy here: She told the Daily Mail she “used to drink 28 cans of Red Bull in a day.” Theoretically, she might have literally consumed 28 cans a day, every day, for five years. What’s more likely, however, is that this is simply rhetorical flourish.

She claims to have dropped 6,000 pounds a year (or about $9,000) on the drink. If she drank 28 cans a day, that’s 10,220 cans per year. Do Red Bull cans sell for 88 cents a can? Hmm. On Amazon, a 12-pack goes for $22.57 (or about $1.90 a can). And to be fair, the UK price of Red Bull may be significantly cheaper, but it’s looking unlikely, one must admit.

According to The Sun, Lupari wants the government to pay for her gastric lap band surgery.

Michael Rosen is a reporter for Fusion based out of Oakland.

 
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