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Green tea supplements ruined my liver

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#111

Post by raverbashing »

saalweachter wrote: post #90
raverbashing wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes, if only people ate a perfectly balanced diet and had time and resources to know how to get the exact quantity of every ingredient. Saying "you don't need supplements" is naive idealism. And here's the catch, "healthy people don't need supplements" but how many people are taking multivitamins and hence supplementing a dietary deficiency? "Don't take vitamin D" until you have an issue and then have to go to the…

Yes, do not take vitamin D unless under the direction of a doctor. As a fat-soluble vitamin, it's not super difficult to poison yourself with it.

Max recommended dosage for adults: 100ug per day (4kUI) with some places suggesting 250ug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_D#Suggested_t...

Typical supplement dosages: from 5ug to 25ug

So no, unless you eat Vit D supplement like candy you won't have a problem

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#112

Post by istjohn »

sieveoferos wrote: post #93

This is not great reporting by the BBC. Most grievously, as others have mentioned, they don't mention the dosages this guy was taking. The important point to grasp behind all this concern over "supplements" is that there's no such thing as a supplement. Everything that's not a food is a drug. If something is not part of a human diet somewhere - i.e. if it's been extracted and refined significantly - then it's a drug.…

Strongly disagree.

>This article is only interesting if you still conflate "green tea" with "natural" and "natural" with "safe".

Green tea _is_ natural. And I conflate "consumed daily by millions of people for thousands of years without incident" with safe. Green tea is not an obscure herb like echinachea or ginko biloba. The idea that putting it in capsules would make it dangerous is not obvious at all. It sounds like magical thinking. So the fact that it is true, and it is in fact dangerous, is actually quite curious to my mind.

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#113

Post by dwighttk »

istjohn wrote: post #112
sieveoferos wrote: post #93

This is not great reporting by the BBC. Most grievously, as others have mentioned, they don't mention the dosages this guy was taking. The important point to grasp behind all this concern over "supplements" is that there's no such thing as a supplement. Everything that's not a food is a drug. If something is not part of a human diet somewhere - i.e. if it's been extracted and refined significantly - then it's a drug.…

Strongly disagree. >This article is only interesting if you still conflate "green tea" with "natural" and "natural" with "safe". Green tea _is_ natural. And I conflate "consumed daily by millions of people for thousands of years without incident" with safe. Green tea is not an obscure herb like echinachea or ginko biloba. The idea that putting it in capsules would make it dangerous is not obvious at all. It sounds li…

But you would still like to see the doseage he was taking though, right? (That was the original complaint)

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#114

Post by arethuza »

camtarn wrote: post #110
arethuza wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author, a junior doctor at the time, later acts the consultant what plant he was referring to and the consultant says "a water lily". I think the consultant in question had a bit of a thing about people consuming large quantities of "natural" products and being surprised that this could make them quite ill and indulged in a bit of a rant.

Ha! There actually is a tree which will kill you if you hang around it for long enough (the manchineel tree), but to be fair I wouldn't expect to find it in somebody's garden. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/whatever-you-do-do-not...

Slightly surprised that tree isn't native to Australia - I guess though that pretty much any tree of a decent size will potentially kill you if you stand under it long enough!

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#115

Post by bunderbunder »

sieveoferos wrote: post #93

This is not great reporting by the BBC. Most grievously, as others have mentioned, they don't mention the dosages this guy was taking. The important point to grasp behind all this concern over "supplements" is that there's no such thing as a supplement. Everything that's not a food is a drug. If something is not part of a human diet somewhere - i.e. if it's been extracted and refined significantly - then it's a drug.…

Everything that's not a food is a drug.

I get the sentiment, but it's not quite that simple. For example, certain kinds of red yeast rice are banned for sale in the USA because they contain medically significant amounts of lovastatin.

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#116

Post by [deleted] »

istjohn wrote: post #112
sieveoferos wrote: post #93

This is not great reporting by the BBC. Most grievously, as others have mentioned, they don't mention the dosages this guy was taking. The important point to grasp behind all this concern over "supplements" is that there's no such thing as a supplement. Everything that's not a food is a drug. If something is not part of a human diet somewhere - i.e. if it's been extracted and refined significantly - then it's a drug.…

Strongly disagree. >This article is only interesting if you still conflate "green tea" with "natural" and "natural" with "safe". Green tea _is_ natural. And I conflate "consumed daily by millions of people for thousands of years without incident" with safe. Green tea is not an obscure herb like echinachea or ginko biloba. The idea that putting it in capsules would make it dangerous is not obvious at all. It sounds li…

[deleted]

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#117

Post by bunderbunder »

vlan0 wrote: post #102
Tor3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general rule is: You don't need supplements. Period. That's because supplements provide (or are supposed to provide) trace elements that you need, but you only need a little bit of it. Like minerals and certain vitamins etc. The thing is - you basically need the same (trace) amount of it, whatever your lifestyle is. And you get it through eating a normal varied diet (e.g. a little meat, vegetables, some fish and…

>Say, if you are a vegan with a sedentary life style. You're simply not getting enough of the trace elements through the restricted type of food you eat. I'm unsure what the sedentary life style has to due with not getting adequate nutrition. A balanced vegan diet generally will easily cover all your bases. The only worry is B12, and even that is easily overcome with fortified milk alternatives. Just look at Jon's fo…

FWIW, B12 is something that everyone gets from fortification. It's just that, with animal products, it doesn't need to go on the ingredients label because it gets there by putting it in the animals' feed.

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#118

Post by Tor3 »

vlan0 wrote: post #102
Tor3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general rule is: You don't need supplements. Period. That's because supplements provide (or are supposed to provide) trace elements that you need, but you only need a little bit of it. Like minerals and certain vitamins etc. The thing is - you basically need the same (trace) amount of it, whatever your lifestyle is. And you get it through eating a normal varied diet (e.g. a little meat, vegetables, some fish and…

>Say, if you are a vegan with a sedentary life style. You're simply not getting enough of the trace elements through the restricted type of food you eat. I'm unsure what the sedentary life style has to due with not getting adequate nutrition. A balanced vegan diet generally will easily cover all your bases. The only worry is B12, and even that is easily overcome with fortified milk alternatives. Just look at Jon's fo…

> I'm unsure what the sedentary life style has to due with not getting adequate nutrition. A balanced vegan diet generally will easily cover all your bases. The only worry is B12, and even that is easily overcome with fortified milk alternatives.

It's easy: You need a certain amount of trace elements every day: Some iron, some minerals, etc. The food you eat contains a bit of that. If you don't eat enough of that food, you don't get enough of the trace elements. A balanced vegetarian diet is fine, but if you eat little (and you will, if you only need, say, 1500 calories a day), you may not get enough of everything. When that's said, maybe you do - depending on exactly what you eat, but as you said yourself, B12 could be a problem.

Go biking - hard - for four hours after (physical) work, and you'll have to eat enormous amounts (relatively speaking) of the same food, and you'll definitely get enough of everything.

The biggest problem is for those who try to live on uncooked vegetables. For some reason they think that it's just the thing, but humans evolved away from that diet a very long time ago, before we were homo sapiens. We don't have the jaws, the teeth, the guts to digest enough nutrients from raw vegetables only. If you live on that, you'll need supplements.

But let's go back to my initial statement: "The general rule is: You don't need supplements." What you are saying doesn't contradict that. What I meant with my too long additonal comments was just that the more you need to eat (e.g. due to exercise), the less supplements you need - if you ever needed any at all. Which is the opposite of how certain "health" and training magazines state it.

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#119

Post by vorpalhex »

istjohn wrote: post #112
sieveoferos wrote: post #93

This is not great reporting by the BBC. Most grievously, as others have mentioned, they don't mention the dosages this guy was taking. The important point to grasp behind all this concern over "supplements" is that there's no such thing as a supplement. Everything that's not a food is a drug. If something is not part of a human diet somewhere - i.e. if it's been extracted and refined significantly - then it's a drug.…

Strongly disagree. >This article is only interesting if you still conflate "green tea" with "natural" and "natural" with "safe". Green tea _is_ natural. And I conflate "consumed daily by millions of people for thousands of years without incident" with safe. Green tea is not an obscure herb like echinachea or ginko biloba. The idea that putting it in capsules would make it dangerous is not obvious at all. It sounds li…

"All things are poison, and nothing is without poison, the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison." - Paracelsus

Think about the amount of green tea (the plant) that you actually consume in a cup of tea. Even if it's loose tea and you've done a sloppy job, perhaps a few granules.

Now imagine popping a couple of capsules packed with the stuff every day. All of a sudden your intake of something has spiked a few hundred times. It could be cinnamon and you'd have health consequences.

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#120

Post by bentona »

bunderbunder wrote: post #115
sieveoferos wrote: post #93

This is not great reporting by the BBC. Most grievously, as others have mentioned, they don't mention the dosages this guy was taking. The important point to grasp behind all this concern over "supplements" is that there's no such thing as a supplement. Everything that's not a food is a drug. If something is not part of a human diet somewhere - i.e. if it's been extracted and refined significantly - then it's a drug.…

Everything that's not a food is a drug. I get the sentiment, but it's not quite that simple. For example, certain kinds of red yeast rice are banned for sale in the USA because they contain medically significant amounts of lovastatin.

> Everything that's not a food is a drug.

And also some food is a drug :)

Pedantic, I know, but I think the parent's real point (pay attention to what you put in your body) is only strengthened by the fact that this line is blurry.

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