14 DAY TRIAL // A case report published in the New England Journal of Medicine this past April 1 details how, after having drunk too much iced tea for years, a middle-aged man ended up suffering kidney failure and needing urgent medical attention.
The man started feeling seriously ill and was hospitalized back in May 2014. He has since been allowed to return home to friends and family, but his kidneys are still in fairly poor shape. He is on dialysis and there is little hope he will recover.
It turns out it is possible to OD on iced tea
Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, University of Arkansas specialist Alejandra Mena-Gutierrez explains that, prior to having been admitted to hospital and diagnosed with kidney failure, the man was in the habit of drinking 16 glasses of iced black tea daily.
The researcher, together with the other medical experts who handled this case, believes that it was a compound naturally occurring in black tea that damaged the 56-year-old patient's kidneys beyond repair and put him in the hospital.
The compound, known as oxalate, it only beneficial if and when consumed in moderation. Too much of it, on the other hand, is likely to trigger all sorts of health trouble, kidney failure included, explains scientist Alejandra Mena-Gutierrez.
Having developed kidney failure, as indicated by the high levels of calcium oxalate crystals in his urine, the man experienced symptoms such as weakness and body aches. Since his family had no history of kidney disease, his iced tea habit was identified as the underlying cause of his illness.
“With 16 cups of tea daily, the patient's consumption of oxalate was more than 1500 mg - a level that is higher than the average American intake by a factor of approximately 3 to 10. The case presented here was almost certainly due to excessive consumption of iced tea,” reads the report detailing this case.
Too much tea can also harm bones, even teeth
Back in 2013, a 47-year-old woman in Detroit, US, was diagnosed with a rare disease dubbed skeletal fluorosis. The condition made her joints stiff and caused her to experience severe bone pains. It even made her teeth so easily breakable that she eventually lost all of them.
According to the doctors who diagnosed her, the woman developed this condition because, for about 17 years, she kept drinking a pitcher of tea made from over 100 tea bags on a daily basis. As a result, her body was exposed to harmful doses of the mineral fluoride.