Jan 17th, '17, 15:12
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Re: Excessive drinking of tea and health issues

by onjinone » Jan 17th, '17, 15:12

KaiRong wrote:What is considered to be the "normal" daily tea intake, and what is an excessive one?

I have been drinking Chinese and Japanese teas regularly for five years now. My body can't tolerate coffee, so I drink tea for the daily caffeine intake, and of course for the taste as well :) However, my girlfriend (Chinese) said that I drink too much tea and it's not a good habit, as according to TCM tea exerts your body, especially your kidney and can cause irreversible damage on thr long term. I understand her reasoning, however I don't think that I drink too much. I usually start the day with a matcha (usucha - for me, 110 ml water with 3 grams of tea works the best), and if I have time to est breakfast at home (which I usually don't do - bad habit, I know) I also drink a sencha, gyokuro, Longjing or other milder Chinese green after the matcha, brewed for four/five times (let's calculate with half litre in total). In the office I only have time for a quick green after lunch, prepared in a very Western way (0.35 litre of water with 4 grams of green brewed twice). If I have to work overtime or prepare for some exams, presentations, etc. I tend to drink a roasted oolong or shu puerh late evening. So I drink a little more than a litre of tea every day, accompanied by 2-2.5 litre of water. I hate Coke, sweetened juices, sodas, etc., so my fluid intake consist only of tea and water.
What do you think about it? How much tea do you drink on a daily basis?
Like with anything else, the safest method is to consume everything in moderation.

If you're looking at tea from a TCM perspective, tea should definitely not be consumed like water. The vast teas have a cooling property, where cooling is more of a TCM term. I don't have Chinese input so I'll edit the post later with the characters. It is due to this cooling that science has found that tea is anti-inflammatory. The tea is basically cooling inflammation and as a result, it helps to put the body back in balance.

Your girlfriend is not totally off when she says kidneys can be damaged by over consumption. Even more likely possible when the tea itself is not the best quality.

With that said, green and oolongs tend to be much more cooling on the overall spectrum of tea types. It does well to balance Western diets which tend to more easily cause inflammation simply due to the way food is cooked (most foods are fried, grilled, etc.). This is the reason why it's a little less easy for people who eat a Western diet to over do the green teas compared to people who do other diets.

Too much of the green tea can contribute to the gastric problems that I've seen being mentioned. It can also cause headaches, feeling cold, etc. Emphasizing that this is all still from a TCM perspective.

Now back to your question. It is still very possible for everyone to drink too much tea but the health effects vary from person to person due to a variety of factors. i.e. lifestyle, genetics, etc.

The safest tea is always puerh for year round consumption. It's not as cooling as green, oolongs. And its properties actually warm the body and encourage blood flow. When combined by its digestive and other health properties, it makes it an ideal and very safe tea to drink more of.

Another thing, I'm not a doctor but this is still pretty basic knowledge in Chinese society, maybe slightly less with younger people nowadays. Feel free to take it all with a grain of salt.

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Apr 21st, '17, 17:52
Posts: 17
Joined: Apr 21st, '17, 16:14

Re: Excessive drinking of tea and health issues

by LooseLeafTeaMarket01 » Apr 21st, '17, 17:52

Its "too much" when you start to not feel good or some health issue arises.

I can't imagine tea being able to create any real problems. The only scenario I can think of would be if you are very sensitive to tannins, are taking in too much caffeine, or you put sugar in it.

The other issue I could see is that tea does have a net acid effect on the body. Much less than coffee but it still does. If your body is sensitive to that, I suppose that could be a potential issue. But a liter really isn't that much tea. A liter of soda a day on the other hand is basically slow suicide.

Your best bet is just to get checked by your doctor often, as someone mentioned.

Mar 30th, '18, 06:13
Posts: 7
Joined: Mar 30th, '18, 05:25

Re: Excessive drinking of tea and health issues

by InternPrimas » Mar 30th, '18, 06:13

It creeps me out but I realize that not everything can be trusted when it comes to demonizing healthy things. Vegetables are considered healthy with nutrition and better than eating fried fast foods. So technically one could say Vegetables are the perfect food except the fact some Vegetables are sprayed with pesticides and other stuff and contain neurotoxins parts per million. So technically something that should be healthy for us could have these toxic poisons under PPM or PPB. Same thing with Water. Water is good for us however it can have contaminates. I hope that most Tea that is picked doesn't have bad stuff in it.

Apr 1st, '18, 18:09
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Joined: Nov 2nd, '17, 06:30

Re: Excessive drinking of tea and health issues

by TeaLovingLady » Apr 1st, '18, 18:09

What about the impact of green tea on thyroid?That's an interesting topic. On the one hand all is good in moderation but where are the limits if every person has different individual needs and health conditions? Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, that's true. In my case too much of green tea turned out bad but I think it's only because I have some hormonal issues, including hypothyroidism. I take drugs for this and a few years ago there was a time when I really used to drink a lot of Japanese and also Chinese green teas. Then I noticed my hair was getting thinner and thinner despite the fact I had extremely thick hair years before. I started to do some research on it (I can post some links if you wish) and it turned out that fluoride that green teas contain has a bad impacy on the absorption of iodine! On a few websites it turned out there were more people like me who also drank excessive amounts of tea (I was a real green tea addict, I used to drink up to 2 liters of tea daily which isn't little) and they also suffered from hair loss! I'm not 100% sure that was the reason cause I know lots of people who can drink liters of tea daily and they're super healthy, no side effects. But maybe it's the case of people who have hormonal imbalance, maybe tea disrupts certain mechanisms, what do you think?

Apr 2nd, '18, 11:05
Posts: 3
Joined: Mar 26th, '18, 14:34

Re: Excessive drinking of tea and health issues

by mrsencha » Apr 2nd, '18, 11:05

TeaLovingLady wrote: What about the impact of green tea on thyroid?That's an interesting topic. On the one hand all is good in moderation but where are the limits if every person has different individual needs and health conditions? Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, that's true. In my case too much of green tea turned out bad but I think it's only because I have some hormonal issues, including hypothyroidism. I take drugs for this and a few years ago there was a time when I really used to drink a lot of Japanese and also Chinese green teas. Then I noticed my hair was getting thinner and thinner despite the fact I had extremely thick hair years before. I started to do some research on it (I can post some links if you wish) and it turned out that fluoride that green teas contain has a bad impacy on the absorption of iodine! On a few websites it turned out there were more people like me who also drank excessive amounts of tea (I was a real green tea addict, I used to drink up to 2 liters of tea daily which isn't little) and they also suffered from hair loss! I'm not 100% sure that was the reason cause I know lots of people who can drink liters of tea daily and they're super healthy, no side effects. But maybe it's the case of people who have hormonal imbalance, maybe tea disrupts certain mechanisms, what do you think?
Fluoride also has a bad impact on the absorption of iron, therefore it is advised that you pay attention to your iron intake.

I would say it's a good thing to have a tea plan - I only drink tea on weekdays and never on the weekends. Also if you're taking an iron supplement it would be better for people to drink tea in the morning and take the supplement in the evening, or the other way around.

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