Earl Grey tea intoxication [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Earl Grey tea intoxication [pdf]

docente.unicas.it

83 pointsdbcooper40 comments

https://web.archive.org/web/20140912083558/http://www.docent...

TL;DR: Don't drink 4L of the stuff per day.

That is an inaccurate summary, the patient was fine on 4L of black tea per day, it was the Bergamont essence in Earl Grey that caused his issues.

I also learned about a new thing, phototoxic chemicals.

> That is an inaccurate summary

Not inaccurate. Merely imprecise.

Excessive black tea consumption can also cause fluorosis. It's quite difficult to say just how much tea one would have to drink to cause any symptoms though.

Bottom line, moderation is usually a good idea.

What's fluorosis?

The result of consuming too much fluoride. I believe it usually manifests as white marks on your teeth, but only as they grow in, so I'm not sure adults should care about fluorosis or not.

Unfortunately fluorosis can be a bit more serious than just some marks on your teeth.

In severe cases of skeletal fluorosis, patients can experience pain/damage to the bones and joints.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletal_fluorosis

at work i see people gulp more than 4 liter of, employer provided, water bottle with fake (sorry, "natural") fruit aroma..

Or if you must drink 4L, maybe don't drink exactly the same tea; try a variety of different teas.

Not clear how dense it is. If I brew the tea with0 4x density, it fits in a 1 liter.

Yeah. I love Earl Gray and sometimes will brew 64 ounces using 1 tea bag and a packet of stevia for my daily fluid intake. I hope 1 tea bag diluted should be okay.

A gallon. He was drinking a gallon of tea a day. I would hope any reasonably intelligent human being would not put a gallon daily of even a mild stimulant in his or her body for years on end and be surprised at bad things happening.

It's like those idiots that get diabetes after drinking 4L of soda per day for years on end. Who could possibly have known that 1020 calories and 276g of sugar per 2L of soda -- or twice that if you drink 2x2L -- could be unhealthy?

But it wasn't the "mild stimulant" that was causing problems; he was fine drinking a gallon a day of tea without oil of bergamot.

You then go off on some rant about soda; the effects of eating an extra 1000 calories a day are well known. They do not apply to black tea.

And how would you know? Virtually nobody has studied the effects of long term high level black tea dosing, at last in part because (I believe) society has an assumption that most people aren't that stupid. A cup or five a day is understood because people do it. Assuming a cup is ~8 fluid oz, he drank nearly 17/day.

ps -- since you didn't read the article, he wasn't fine drinking the black tea

   Since this type of tea had given him occasional gastric
   pain, he changed to Earl Grey (Twinings & Company,
   London, UK), which he thought would be less harmful to
   his stomach.

Virtually nobody has studied the effects of long term high level black tea dosing, at last in part because (I believe) society has an assumption that most people aren't that stupid.

In the southern US, iced and often sweetened black tea is consumed in large quantities and has been for quite a long time, to the point that the state of Georgia once jokingly introduced a bill mandating the presence of sweet tea on restaurant drink menus.

I regularly drink 1.5 gallons of iced tea per day, and 0.5 gallons of water, and have for a long time with no ill effects. Of course it's not 25 years, but it used to be 8 liters of diet coke per day, and the acid on the teeth alone was enough to quit. However, where I think there is some difference is that I'm 6'4, 240lbs and in quite good shape. I think size definitely has some impact on that threshold, and until I see an explicit reason for harm, I see no benefit in stopping. But I'm stubborn like that and my kidneys could implode tomorrow for all I know :/

Your BMI is 29.2; unless you're a body builder with a ton of muscle you're not in "quite good shape." No offense.

BMI tends to not work that well as you get taller. From Wikipedia: "Because the BMI depends upon weight and the square of height, it ignores basic scaling laws whereby mass increases to the 3rd power of linear dimensions. Hence, larger individuals, even if they had exactly the same body shape and relative composition, always have a larger BMI."

Nah, 6'4" at 240 lbs is not good shape.

BMI doesn't work well for measuring much. At least it's always been completely useless in telling me anything about my health. My body fat percentage is around 13.8%. Do I have some fat to lose? Sure, but it's still pretty good. And I do have a bit more muscle than the average guy. I wouldn't say I'm a "body builder", but I do workout 5 days a week, and measure out my food. Trying to judge someone's health from just to factors like weight and height seems flawed.

I really don't see your point. I have a small amount of whole milk in my black tea, mainly to aid in the cooling of it. In 4 litres, I'd probably be getting close to a cup of milk. So I would drink approximately 150 calories extra in a day, 13g of which would be carbohydrates consumed in a near balance with fats and proteins and due to the vast dilution would produce the minimalist of insulin responses.

So I really don't get your point. By drinking 4L of tea in a day, I would be consuming less than half the sugar of a can of soda.

Also Tea is hardly a mild stimulant, it contains more caffeine per unit than soda does. Yet people easily drink a few cups of coffee a day, which can easily have three-fold more caffeine than tea (five cups in a day would be close to 4L of tea) and have no ill effects from the caffeine unless they're caffeine sensitive and those people respond to decaf drinks with a tenth the caffeine in them.

Yes, even drinking too much water can be deadly:

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

The "Notable cases" section contains mostly: drug use, drinking contests by radio stations, kids who were forcefully fed lot of water (3.4l) as punishment :(, also 4 liter water in 2 hours, and 8 liter in one day can be deadly.

Someone should warn Jean-Luc.

Nah, he's a knowing abuser of the stuff.

More specifically, don't drink more than 1L of Earl Grey per day. Although they probably vary in bergamot content from brand to brand, so YMMV.

tea. hot. Earl gray. four liter.

This is amazing. I drink about half a pitcher of tea a day. I picked up the habit as a replacement for soda about 15 years ago. I usually drop an Earl Grey tea bag in with about 4 regular black tea bags. I am going to have to try to drop the Earl Grey habit and see, but I do get strange muscle cramps in my legs and ribcage. I've been attributing them to injuries I obtained while playing sports when I was younger.

I've been making "tea water" for a while now as a supplement to plain water, as I rarely drink any soda or juices. 1-2 teabags in a 2L pitcher goes in the fridge, cold brew for at least a couple hours. Same thing for fruit/herb infusions.

It gives me a hint of the flavor of tea, and it is very diluted compared to regular iced/hot tea preparations. I don't have any qualms about drinking a lot of it. 1 teabag for black/stronger teas, 2 for the lighter greens/weirder teas (like Korean/Asian roasted barley or corn tea).

Interesting. I'll have to give that a try.

Not sure why they conclude that "bergamot essence may induce muscle cramps" etc based on a single case. What if the man had an allergic response of some kind and 99.99% of the population would be fine drinking so much earl grey tea?

Because the proposed mechanism has nothing to do with histamine or immune response. Such a K+ channel blocker should hypothetically have the same effect in the vast majority of the general population.

So, if I really like Earl Grey, what would be the antidote to the K+ channel blocker?

Hypothetically if a person did experience myalgia as a direct result of drinking Earl Grey tea and their proposed mechanism is accurate, the treatment would probably involve K+ channel opener with a lower K_d (higher affinity) than the culprit bergapten, perhaps Diazoxide.

I don't think they are drawing those conclusions from this case. They appear to be pointing out that these are known reactions, based on the references.

Really, they are just reporting the surprising fact that it is possible to overdose on bergamot by drinking a large, but not unreasonably so (at least by UK standards), quantity of tea.

This of course is only one case report, so one should not assume that one needs to drink 4L of Earl Grey to induce these symptoms. I typically drink about 2L of tea per day, yet 2-3 cups of Earl Grey makes me feel nauseated. I've never had cramps or vision problems, but that's probably because I stop when I start feeling ill. This is good to know for future reference.

Most essential oils are poisonous except in very limited quantities. The effects might be different, but this isn't specially surprising.

I enjoyed reading this article, with a nicely brewed cup of Earl Grey.

The alternative Lady Grey tea [0] has lower concentrations of oil of bergamot.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Grey_(tea)

i will have the 8L lady grey, please.

I normally drink black coffee. After reading the article I now want some tea, Earl Grey, hot.

I think it says something perverse about our desires but I too would like some Earl Grey tea.

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