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Green tea supplements ruined my liver

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#131

Post by JustSomeNobody »

jerf wrote: post #123
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An ounce of pumpkin seeds and a cup of black beans and you'd only have to eat 7 servings of broccoli.

The problem with that sort of suggestion is that by the time you're eating the food that high in this and the food that's high in that and the food that's high in the other, you've gotten to your ~2000 calories for the day and are still missing nutrients, plus your diet is infeasibly bland. There are some things that if you can't get them from a normal diet are certainly most easily obtained from supplements. Vitamin…

Then maybe the RDA is just wrong. If we can't eat enough healthy food to sustain us without becoming obese, then the numbers are wrong. I mean, how could we have possibly made it as long as we have as a species if we are only now realizing that we can't eat enough good foods to be healthy???

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#132

Post by ubercode5 »

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…

It's possible to overdose on water.

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#133

Post by WalterSear »

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.

This isn't the case.

Your fear of overdose is misfounded. You have to try really hard. Deficiency, on the other hand, is endemic.

"Vitamin D deficiency is a major public health problem worldwide in all age groups, even in those residing in countries with low latitude, where it was generally assumed that UV radiation was adequate enough to prevent this deficiency, and in industrialized countries, where vitamin D fortification has been implemented now for years."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4018438/

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#134

Post by trukterious »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #131
jerf wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that sort of suggestion is that by the time you're eating the food that high in this and the food that's high in that and the food that's high in the other, you've gotten to your ~2000 calories for the day and are still missing nutrients, plus your diet is infeasibly bland. There are some things that if you can't get them from a normal diet are certainly most easily obtained from supplements. Vitamin…

Then maybe the RDA is just wrong. If we can't eat enough healthy food to sustain us without becoming obese, then the numbers are wrong. I mean, how could we have possibly made it as long as we have as a species if we are only now realizing that we can't eat enough good foods to be healthy???

>how could we have possibly made it as long as we have as a species if we are only now realizing that we can't eat enough good foods to be healthy?

Partly due to agricultural soil depletion of certain elements like magnesium, zinc, iodine.

Btw our prehistoric ancestors weren't especially healthy either:

https://imgur.com/gallery/2G0BDwx

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#135

Post by dwighttk »

tallanvor wrote: post #126
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…

No, the general rule is: Talk to your doctor if you're wondering if you should be taking supplements. Your generalization potentially puts people in harms way. A varied diet is not always enough - some vitamins and minerals affect how others are absorbed and whether or not they are available to your body. And heavy exercise can cause deficiencies if your diet doesn't contain enough of the substances that you lose whi…

Right, I know someone who has a severe potassium deficiency and through multiple methods (including but not limited to increased milk & banana consumption and a large potassium pill) gets to where blood tests return "low" rather than "dangerously low"

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#136

Post by magduf »

dgacmu wrote: post #127
istjohn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Tonka bean has been eaten daily by millions of people for thousands of years. It's delicious. I had some in a dessert just last month. Fantastically good. The seeds contain 1-3% coumarin. In large quantities, it's toxic to the liver and kidneys, and is banned as a food additive in the US. As others noted, there are a lot of things we consume in normal doses that if you consumed 10-50x as much would likely cause probl…

>As others noted, there are a lot of things we consume in normal doses that if you consumed 10-50x as much would likely cause problems for at least some percent of the people who eat them.

Exactly: try drinking 50x as much water as you normally do. You'll probably die of water poisoning. Is water a poison?

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#137

Post by jerf »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #131
jerf wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that sort of suggestion is that by the time you're eating the food that high in this and the food that's high in that and the food that's high in the other, you've gotten to your ~2000 calories for the day and are still missing nutrients, plus your diet is infeasibly bland. There are some things that if you can't get them from a normal diet are certainly most easily obtained from supplements. Vitamin…

Then maybe the RDA is just wrong. If we can't eat enough healthy food to sustain us without becoming obese, then the numbers are wrong. I mean, how could we have possibly made it as long as we have as a species if we are only now realizing that we can't eat enough good foods to be healthy???

In addition to trukterious' point, which I agree with, I would echo that the idea that the RDA is just wrong is also a distinct possibility. Take a look at this: http://blogs.creighton.edu/heaney/2015/02/13/the-iom-miscalc... Ponder what it implies about the other RDA values. And look at the date. It wasn't that long ago.

I just pulled a fairly recent bottle of CostCo Vitamin D out here, and it's still using a value of 800IU as the RDA.

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#138

Post by logfromblammo »

bentona wrote: post #120
bunderbunder wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food." --Hippocrates

"Walking is man's best medicine." --also Hippocrates

There's a syllogism in there somewhere. Probably about soup made from worn-out shoes.

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#139

Post by adrianN »

kup0 wrote: post #106
ohnope wrote: post #72

This really makes me wonder if matcha powder poses a similar danger. Apparently it has 137 times the amount of EGCG compared to regular green tea

Interesting thought. Matcha is powdered whole tea leaves, so one would be consuming far more of the internal ingredients of the leaf than they would by having other green teas, where the leaves are just being steeped in water. I guess the only questions there would be how concentrated Matcha is compared to the supplement forms and how much the body would absorb from it in this form. If the resulting dose is still a f…

You are probably safe if you drink about as much Matcha as people who regularly drink Matcha. That is a cup or two a day. Drinking Matcha is supposed to be a ritualistic action, its preparation takes a bit of time and it should be drunk in a mindful manner. It's not a drink where you prepare a large amount and drink it throughout the day.

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#140

Post by bunderbunder »

logfromblammo wrote: post #138
bentona wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

"Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food." --Hippocrates "Walking is man's best medicine." --also Hippocrates There's a syllogism in there somewhere. Probably about soup made from worn-out shoes.

I'm envisioning an offshoot of Paleo where you really do spend all your time hunting and gathering.
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