Too Much Tea Causes Unusual Bone Disease | Hacker News Reader

Too Much Tea Causes Unusual Bone Disease

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16 pointsuladzislau34 comments

Oh no! I drink a lot of tea...

47 year old woman...drank a pitcher of tea made from at least 100 tea bags daily, for 17 years

Whew, not even close. Also, WTF. Glad to see that simply halting the excess consumption should allow her body to repair the imbalance over time.

Ha ha, I had the same thought and was coming to post the same excerpt. I drink a huge amount of tea... but not 100 bags a day. I already knew about the fluoride in tea. Also in some other things:

http://www.fortcollinscwa.org/pages/fluoride.htm

How much do you drink? The article said that there were other cases in the U.S., and that the typical patient was drinking about a gallon a day.

I myself on a typical day drink 2 32oz pots. That's half a gallon so I kind of wonder if I should cut back.

They must have been some pretty nasty tea bags for that to be affordable. 100 half decent teabags each day would be barely cheaper than smoking.

Tea is one area where I go for the expensive stuff. It has to be pure. Drinking green tea with impurities like fluoride may or may not be killing me, but the thought of it kills the experience.

Sadly, the woman likely believed she was gaining super health benefits from her daily ritual. That or she really loved her tea.

>Tea is one area where I go for the expensive stuff. It has to be pure. Drinking green tea with impurities like fluoride may or may not be killing me, but the thought of it sure kills the experience.

My Monster cables may or may not provide a better a signal than a coat hanger, but the thought that I might not have the best possible audio sure would kill the experience.

dhissami is actually correct that more expensive teas are lower in fluoride than cheap ones. However, it's because of an accident of biology, not because anyone designed it that way. Higher quality teas tend to be made from younger leaves, and the younger the leaf, the less fluoride.

But most people don't use 100 tea bags a day. Low levels of fluoride aren't going to kill you.

I never said they would. I just said that expensive tea has less fluoride-- a statement of fact. Based on what I've read on this subject, less than ten cups of tea a day should be fine. Also keep in mind that there is usually fluoride in tap water.

And now that we've mentioned tap water and fluoride, I guess we can expect the kooks to come out...

eurleif, I agree with you, but the exact long-term side effects are unknown. And since I drink tea to relax, it's something I don't want to worry about...else it would defeat the point.

> Drinking green tea with impurities like fluoride [...]

That's not an impurity. Camellia sinensis picks up fluorides naturally.

If what you want is pure Camellia sinensis, wouldn't that make fluoride an impurity? Generally, if an added component is undesirable, isn't it automatically an impurity, regardless of whether it was added naturally or not? You got me scratching my head over a word. :)

Category error? Plants are made of elements; fluoride is an element. If the plant, in its natural environment, binds to a particular element and includes it in its makeup, that does not make it an impurity.

At some point you wonder if putting more teabags into the same pitcher doesn't actually make it any stronger. There's gotta be a saturation point for tea solutes. Except maybe for the flouride in them.

It stops being stronger at some point I think. The water can only hold so much of the infusion. I have no scientific evidence other than my own observations -- and that's far from scientific.

"Too much" is generally a relative term depending on where you're from (although this lady didn't fit the customs of the locale) since people drink it both in the morning, evening and stometimes in the afternoon.

These cases also tend to show up in Sri Lanka, which has a tea culture as well. We also need to keep in mind that some areas have naturally high levels of fluoride in the groundwater. Without reading the detailed article (TBA), it's hard to tell if that played a part too.

Edit: Something smells fishy.

Pass it on: A 47-year-old U.S. woman developed a bone disease after drinking a pitcher of tea a day for 17 years.

The actual case hasn't been published in detail and the link to the case : http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMicm1200995

But it mentions: Brewed tea has one of the highest fluoride contents among beverages in the United States. I'd like to see some actual backup of that with hard data.

When I make tea, I find that as little as an extra 3g of tea, or an extra minute of steeping can ruin an entire pot. I can't imagine dumping several ounces of dried tea leaves into a single pot of tea, which is pretty much what this lady was doing.

Agreed. At the most, tea should be left to infuse for 1 minute (loose tea less than that), especially for Black tea blends. Any more and it just kills the flavor.

I'm willing to bet she was doing it for some sort of DIY health thing. People do silly things like over-doing something if they think it's good for you. Well, that then makes it bad for you.

There's a great book on all this called The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzo :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Tea

A very good read on the subject. I think Google Books probably has a free translation.

> Agreed. At the most, tea should be left to infuse for 1 minute (loose tea less than that), especially for Black tea blends. Any more and it just kills the flavor.

Depends. I can leave my Pu-Erh in overnight, and the flavour is still fine. (But Pu-Erh is well known for that.)

Pu-erh is not like ordinary loose tea so it's quite safe to do that. Without stirring or pressing, you don't get too much of the flavor into the water and it's much more coarse. You'll find a lot of the green teas also don't over-flavor the water because of this.

Yes. I guess your 1-minute rule is more appropriate for black teas than anything else. I like my teas more overbrewed in any case.

Strongly disagree; I like tea primarily for the tannins, the almost dry taste on the tongue, moderated by the milk. Such a short steep will make a very weak mug.

If you're drinking the tea without milk, I can see preferring something weak.

Adding milk is more of a Western thing ;)

There are some Sri Lankans who do that due to the British influence and I imagine in India as well, but that's not the case with most of the tea cultures.

Also, if you're doing this for health reasons, I strongly recommend avoiding milk and switching to green tea instead: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/09/27/161895873/health...

> Adding milk is more of a Western thing ;)

> There are some Sri Lankans who do that due to the British influence and I imagine in India as well, but that's not the case with most of the tea cultures.

I wonder where the Mongolians got their milk-tea from. Probably not from the British.

You mean Suutei tsai. It's actually more of a soup than just tea. And milk is just one available ingredient :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suutei_tsai

An old tradition among many Mongols was to not drink water straight. This could have been a result of the Mongols’ belief that water was sacred. It could also have come from the need to conserve water

Yes, that's what I meant. Thanks! And indeed, it's closer to a soup. It takes a while getting used to.

Too much of anything is going to mess with your body. I would have been surprised if drinking the equivalent of 100 tea bags daily for 17 years didn't mess this woman up.

I am disgusted that they chose to measure tea in bags.

/teasnob

Yes. But it seems that lady made her tea from bags.

This is pure fluff.

Linkbait headline. You probably shouldn't each 50 packs of artificial sweetener a day either, or 5 pounds of ice cream.

"100 tea bags daily, for 17 years" almost qualifies as an OCD.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174

after she drank a pitcher of tea made from at least 100 tea bags daily, for 17 years, researchers report.

Duh! Also 100 tea bags daily is a lot more than what people call "too much"!

Too much water will also cause death http://www.smh.com.au/national/bushwalker-died-from-drinking...

Was there ever any proof that drinking fluoride prevents cavities? (As opposed to applying it directly to the teeth.)

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