Can Energy Drinks Like Monster Cause Kidney Stones?

Energy drinks like Monster contain a cocktail of ingredients that can individually nudge your urine chemistry toward stone-forming territory, though no large trial has directly measured kidney stone rates in regular energy drink consumers. The concern is real but layered: sugar, sodium, caffeine, and certain additives each pull your body’s chemistry in different directions, and some of those directions are contradictory. Whether a daily Monster actually translates into a stone in your kidney depends on how much you drink, which version you choose, and what the rest of your diet and hydration look like.

Sugar and Fructose Are the Biggest Red Flags

A standard 16-ounce can of Monster Energy contains about 54 grams of sugar, most of it from sucrose and glucose-fructose blends. Fructose is the ingredient that kidney stone researchers worry about most. When your body processes fructose, it drives up uric acid levels in the blood, and elevated uric acid is one of the core risk factors for both uric acid stones and calcium oxalate stones. In a controlled study, fructose administration raised fasting uric acid levels significantly while also affecting calcium and parathyroid hormone, both of which influence how your kidneys handle minerals.¹ Fructose consumption also increases the urinary excretion of calcium, oxalate, and uric acid, all of which are building blocks for the most common types of kidney stones.²

This matters because fructose intake in the general population has climbed steeply over the past few decades, and sweetened beverages are a major contributor. If you drink one or two sugared energy drinks a day, you are adding a substantial fructose load on top of whatever sugar is already in your meals and snacks. The sugar-free versions of Monster and similar brands sidestep this particular problem entirely, which is a meaningful distinction that many people overlook when asking whether “energy drinks” cause stones.

Caffeine’s Contradictory Role

Caffeine is often assumed to be bad for kidney stones, and the reasoning seems intuitive: caffeine increases urinary calcium excretion, and most kidney stones are made of calcium compounds. In one study, a caffeine dose increased urinary calcium output meaningfully in both pre- and postmenopausal women, with sodium and magnesium excretion also going up.³ In people who have already formed calcium stones, caffeine raised a commonly used stone risk index from 2.4 to 3.1, and roughly four out of five stone formers showed an increased risk score after caffeine.⁴

But here is where the story gets counterintuitive. When researchers look at populations over time rather than measuring urine in a lab, caffeine intake is consistently associated with a lower risk of developing kidney stones. A large study involving over 6,000 participants with 24-hour urine data found that people who consumed more caffeine had higher urine volume and lower supersaturation for both calcium oxalate and uric acid, the two conditions that most often lead to stone formation.⁵ The likely explanation is that caffeine is a diuretic. It makes you produce more urine, and dilute urine is one of the strongest defenses against stone formation. The extra calcium it pushes into the urine gets diluted enough that it does not crystallize as readily.

Why the Caffeine in Energy Drinks May Not Protect You Like Coffee Does

If caffeine lowers stone risk, you might assume a caffeine-packed energy drink would be protective. A population-based study complicated that assumption. Caffeine from coffee was associated with roughly a 9 percent decrease in kidney stone risk per quartile of intake. Caffeine from non-coffee sources, however, showed a slight increase in risk rather than a decrease.⁶ The researchers found that the highest quartile of caffeine intake from coffee was linked to roughly a 23 percent lower odds of kidney stones, while the same quartile from non-coffee sources was linked to about a 4 percent higher odds.

Why the difference? Coffee contains compounds beyond caffeine, including chlorogenic acid and other polyphenols, that may independently affect kidney stone chemistry. Energy drinks, by contrast, deliver their caffeine alongside high sugar loads, sodium, and artificial additives. The net effect of drinking a sweetened energy drink is not just “caffeine plus water” but caffeine embedded in a chemical context that may offset or reverse its protective diuretic action. This is probably the single most important finding for energy drink consumers: caffeine alone is not the whole story, and the vehicle it arrives in changes the outcome.

Sodium Pushes Your Kidneys in the Wrong Direction

A 16-ounce Monster contains roughly 370 milligrams of sodium. That is not enormous compared to a fast-food meal, but it adds up if you drink multiple cans or pair them with salty snacks. Sodium has a direct and well-documented effect on kidney stone risk. When sodium intake goes up, your kidneys excrete more calcium into the urine. In normal adults, urinary calcium excretion increases by about 40 milligrams for every 2,300 milligrams of sodium consumed. In people who already form calcium stones, that increase can be roughly double.⁷

The problem compounds because high sodium also decreases urinary citrate. Citrate is one of your body’s natural defenses against stone formation; it binds to calcium in urine and keeps it from crystallizing. In a study of stone formers placed on a high-sodium diet, urinary citrate dropped significantly, urinary pH rose, and the overall propensity for calcium salts to crystallize increased.⁸ So sodium hits you from two sides at once: more calcium in the urine and less citrate to keep it dissolved.

Additives Worth Thinking About

Energy drinks are not just caffeine and sugar water. They contain a shelf full of extras, and some of those deserve attention in the context of kidney stones.

Taurine: Monster and similar brands contain large doses of taurine, typically about 2,000 milligrams per can. Taurine plays several roles in kidney physiology, including regulating blood flow, acting as an osmolyte, and controlling ion transport.⁹ Some animal research has suggested taurine may actually be protective against certain types of kidney damage. At this point, there is no strong evidence that taurine contributes to stone formation, but its effects at the high doses found in energy drinks are not well studied in humans.
B vitamins: Monster contains several B vitamins, often in amounts far exceeding the daily recommended intake. Excess water-soluble B vitamins are generally excreted in urine without much drama. However, some energy drinks also contain vitamin C (ascorbic acid), and ascorbic acid is metabolized into oxalate in the body. Oxalate is a direct precite of calcium oxalate stones, the most common stone type.¹⁰ Not every energy drink formula includes vitamin C, so checking the label matters.
Citric acid: Many energy drinks list citric acid as an ingredient, which might seem like it would help since citrate protects against stones. However, citric acid in a drink is not the same as the potassium citrate prescribed by urologists. A study comparing citric acid to potassium citrate in calcium phosphate stone formers found that citric acid alone did not significantly change urine composition.¹¹ The citric acid on your energy drink’s ingredient list is there for flavor, not for kidney protection.

What Happens When Someone Drinks Too Much

Extreme consumption patterns have led to documented kidney damage. A case report described a 21-year-old man who showed up at the emergency department with nausea, vomiting, and general malaise after consuming roughly two liters of an energy drink product per day for a month. Lab work revealed stage 3 acute kidney injury, with creatinine levels climbing to 10.32 mg/dL, far above the normal range. He had no prior medical conditions and was not taking medications. His kidney function returned to normal about two weeks after he stopped drinking energy drinks.¹²

Acute kidney injury is a different problem from kidney stones, but the case illustrates that high-volume energy drink consumption puts real stress on the kidneys. A study of Iraqi youth found that heavy consumers, particularly those drinking more than seven cans per week, had significantly elevated uric acid levels, though serum creatinine (a marker of kidney filtration) remained stable at that level of consumption.¹³ Elevated uric acid, as discussed earlier, is a direct contributor to stone risk even when the kidneys are otherwise functioning normally.

Urine Volume Matters More Than Most People Realize

The cornerstone of kidney stone prevention is keeping urine dilute. When your urine is concentrated, dissolved minerals are more likely to reach a point where they start crystallizing. Researchers quantify this using relative supersaturation: essentially, how close your urine is to the point where minerals will precipitate out of solution. Stone formers consistently show higher supersaturation of calcium oxalate and calcium phosphate than people who have never had a stone.¹⁴

Anything that increases urine volume helps. A systematic review of fluid intake and stone prevention confirmed that higher fluid intake consistently reduced stone formation, with increased urine output being the primary mechanism.¹⁵ Energy drinks do contribute fluid, and caffeine’s diuretic effect adds to urine output. But the sugar and sodium in a standard energy drink work against that benefit. A sugar-free, low-sodium energy drink consumed alongside plenty of water is a very different proposition from a full-sugar Monster replacing water as your primary fluid source.

Diet also affects supersaturation independently. In uric acid stone formers, switching to a balanced diet reduced uric acid supersaturation by about 47 percent, primarily through increased urine volume and pH, and also lowered calcium oxalate supersaturation by decreasing urinary calcium and oxalate.¹⁶ The point is that your overall dietary pattern matters enormously, and an energy drink sits within that larger context.

Sugar-Free Versus Regular Makes a Real Difference

If you are going to drink energy drinks and want to minimize stone risk, the choice between sugared and sugar-free versions is probably the single most impactful decision. The sugar-free version of Monster strips out the fructose load entirely, removing what is likely the most stone-promoting ingredient in the can. You still get caffeine, taurine, sodium, and B vitamins, but you skip the spike in uric acid and the increased urinary calcium and oxalate that fructose causes. That does not make sugar-free energy drinks neutral for your kidneys, but it does eliminate the ingredient with the strongest evidence of harm.

The sodium remains a concern even in sugar-free formulas. If you are drinking multiple cans per day, you are adding a meaningful amount of sodium to your diet, and as the research shows, each increment of sodium pushes more calcium into your urine while pulling citrate down. Checking the label for sodium content and choosing lower-sodium options when possible is a practical step.

Who Should Be Most Cautious

Kidney stones affect roughly one in ten people at some point in their lives, but some groups carry much higher risk. If you have had a stone before, your urine chemistry is already predisposed to stone formation. The study measuring caffeine’s acute effects on stone risk found that the increase in the calcium oxalate risk index was present in both stone formers and non-stone formers, but stone formers started from a higher baseline and ended at a higher point.⁴ People with a history of stones who are also heavy energy drink consumers are essentially stacking risk on top of risk.

People with idiopathic hypercalciuria, a common inherited condition where the kidneys excrete unusually high amounts of calcium, are also at heightened risk from the sodium and caffeine in energy drinks. For these individuals, the extra calcium pushed into urine by sodium has a proportionally larger effect than in the general population. Family history of kidney stones is a reasonable flag to take the sugar and sodium content of your beverages more seriously.

The Gut Microbiome Connection

An emerging area of research links the gut microbiome to kidney stone formation, particularly through oxalate metabolism. Certain gut bacteria break down dietary oxalate before it reaches the kidneys, and disruptions to those bacterial communities can increase the amount of oxalate that ends up in urine. Animal research has shown that high-oxalate diets can themselves disrupt the gut microbiome, potentially creating a feedback loop where microbiome disruption leads to more oxalate absorption, which leads to further microbiome disruption.¹⁷

How this connects to energy drinks is still speculative, but the artificial sweeteners, preservatives, and acids in energy drinks are the kind of compounds that microbiome researchers suspect can shift gut bacterial populations. If those shifts reduce the populations of oxalate-degrading bacteria, the indirect effect on stone risk could be meaningful. This is an area where the science is genuinely thin, but it is worth keeping in mind, especially for people who consume energy drinks daily over months or years.

What the Beverage Comparison Data Shows

Not all beverages carry the same stone risk, and the differences are large enough to matter. The systematic review on fluid intake and stone prevention found that grapefruit juice, apple juice, orange juice, and sodas all reduced the relative supersaturation of calcium oxalate in urine, while cranberry juice actually increased it.¹⁵ Coffee and tea have generally been associated with lower stone risk in observational studies, likely because of the diuretic effect and the additional protective compounds they contain.

Energy drinks have not been studied as a category in the same way coffee and tea have, which is part of the challenge. The finding that caffeine from non-coffee sources did not show the same protective association as coffee caffeine is the closest we get to a direct comparison, and it suggests that energy drinks should not be assumed to carry the same benefits as coffee even though both deliver caffeine.⁶ If you are choosing between a cup of black coffee and a Monster for your afternoon pickup, the coffee is the better bet for your kidneys, and it is not close.

1
PubMed Central. Fructose increases risk for kidney stones: potential role in metabolic syndrome and heat stress
2
PubMed. Fructose consumption and the risk of kidney stones
3
Nutrition Research. Acute effects of dietary caffeine and aspirin on urinary mineral excretion in pre- and postmenopausal women
4
PubMed. Acute caffeine effects on urine composition and calcium kidney stone risk in calcium stone formers
5
PubMed Central. Caffeine intake and the risk of kidney stones
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PubMed Central. The association between caffeine intake and risk of kidney stones: A population-based study
7
PubMed. Dietary salt, urinary calcium, and kidney stone risk
8
PubMed. The potential role of salt abuse on the risk for kidney stone formation
9
Taurine and the Mitochondrion: Applications in the Pharmacotherapy of Human Diseases. Taurine and the Renal System: Effects on Mitochondrial Function and Energy Metabolism
10
PubMed Central. Vitamin C supplementation and urinary oxalate excretion
11
PubMed Central. Impact of Potassium Citrate vs Citric Acid on Urinary Stone Risk in Calcium Phosphate Stone Formers
12
PubMed Central. Energy drink-induced acute kidney injury: a case report and review of the literature
13
International Journal of Biological and Biomedical Research. Impact of Energy Drink Consumption on Kidney Function and Its Association with Helicobacter pylori Infection in Iraqi Youth
14
PubMed Central. Relative Supersaturation of 24-hour Urine and Likelihood of Kidney Stones
15
PubMed Central. The role of fluid intake in the prevention of kidney stone disease: A systematic review over the last two decades
16
PubMed Central. Urinary Risk Profile, Impact of Diet, and Risk of Calcium Oxalate Urolithiasis in Idiopathic Uric Acid Stone Disease
17
Urolithiasis. A mouse model for the study of diet-induced changes in intestinal microbiome composition on renal calcium oxalate crystal formation