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Green tea supplements ruined my liver

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#101

Post by trukterious »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #96
trukterious wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>With normal healthy food you should get more than enough. No, I looked into it some years ago and it seems unfeasible. For instance you'd have to eat about 15 stalks/heads of broccoli daily to get the RDA of magnesium, and that amount is likely suboptimal.

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

I do eat quite a lot of broccoli but I still don't fancy eating 7 heads every day -- enough to cover two dinner plates.

So I take a magnesium tablet before bed. Less work to prepare and to digest.

The present moral aversion to supplements seems faddish to me. We've gone from one extreme in the 1960s where everyone looked forward to taking all food in pill form, like fictional astronauts, to another extreme where supplements of any kind are frowned upon by many including in the medical establishment. Some supplements don't absorb very well, it's true, and some consumers are irresponsible -- yet atoms are atoms and molecules are molecules regardless of the source.

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#102

Post by vlan0 »

Tor3 wrote: post #59
munchhausen wrote: post #38

Thank you for posting this article. It gave me pause for thought. I have been taking a green tea supplement occasionally. I saw it in a vitamin store, and bought it because of the supposed benefits of antioxidants. I figured - I have a stressful job, I live in a polluted city and do drink alcohol - I probably need the antioxidants. Plus, something that's made out of green tea sounds safe, not likely do any harm, righ…

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 food plans for example. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE-LXXVl3u9yJO3WRGTrEoA

Hell, I eat a plant based diet, live a fairly sedentary life style while maintaining a balanced diet, and my full panel blood work taken at six month intervals comes back with no issues.

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#103

Post by yoklov »

zone411 wrote: post #68
illiac_1962 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are ignoring the most comprehensive studies. Population analysis. There are populations that drink green tea regularly as a matter of tradition. Thats how this shit was discovered in the first place.

Compared to hundreds of studies about green tea extracts, many of them reported by the media, those population-wide studies had minimal effects on the public. And even those studies would usually find the largest effects on people who drink impractically large amounts of green tea, e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3103781/ or http://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/722554/relationship-betwee... (6 cups per…

Honestly its not impractical if you just replace your coffee with it. I probably average over 6 cups per day, and don’t really do it out of any health concern at all.

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#104

Post by village-idiot »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #74
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…

" So when do you not get enough of it? When you don't eat much food, or not enough of certain kinds of foods." The exception to this is Vitamin D... if you live in certain areas of the world. In general, the closer you live to the equator, the less you'll need this supplement during the winter. I wound up with a low level last winter - enough to go to the doctor for testing. My other nutrients were just fine: I'm mos…

Depends also on your skin tone. Generally the paler you are the more effective you will be at generating vitamin D at higher latitudes, even if it does result in easier burning.

Those with darker skin in high latitudes typically need more vitamin D in their diet/supplements.

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#105

Post by IloveHN84 »

illiac_1962 wrote: post #64
IloveHN84 wrote: post #21

I'm in a holding pattern to since more than 6 weeks now because of increased values of the liver. No alcohol, no smoke, always trying to be fit with 3x week sport. Became suddenly yellow, done the liver-biopsy, nothing came out and still with high liver values (GPT, GOT). None of doctors have a fucking idea of what I have. Done all tests against all the kind of Hepatitis, but all of them were negative.

Post your entire diet. Then we can talk.

I eat mainly home-made food, using fresh vegetables and fruit, using as less as possible deep-frozen or ready-made food.

My only drug that I cannot refuse are sweets. Chocolate above all, so i take my daily dose of sweet.

Alcohol is approximately ~0.5L of beer on Saturdays, when going out to eat, sometimes a glass or two of wine. At home I don't drink alcohol, only when at big occasions such as Easter and Xmas.

What I suspect is food poisoning by eating somewhere outside: hypothesis backed by the fact that my wife and my son weren't contaminated at home, so the fresh food @ home was always safe.

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#106

Post by kup0 »

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 fraction of the supplement form, then it's likely safe if one doesn't drink a ton of it.

Thanks for mentioning this though, as a tea drinker I've been considering getting some matcha, and now I need to research more before I do

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#107

Post by CaptainZapp »

zone411 wrote: post #65
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not true at all.

How many studies should I show you that use green tea _extract_, not green tea? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30174618 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29429153 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28904061 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28585735 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27806972 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27062963 etc. Even studies with just "Green Tea" in their titles use green tea…

You're aware that beta carotene, which was hailed as a super food suplement before the term even existet turned out to be carcinogenic? Uups!

I'm not a food scientist, but believe it's extremely problematic to focus on one component or ingredient of something, which is a rather complex combination of a lot of ingredients in a product. Green tea extract may not act the same as actual green tea for umteen reasons.

Another point is cultural context. I'm convinced (and may be talking out of my arse, but I'm still convinced) that part of what makes something like the mediterrean diet successful is cultural context. People take the time to sit down to lunch and dinner. And this matters.

If you try to repackage the exact same ingredients and wolf it down in 10 minutes in front of a tv, or during lunch at your desk it's not the same thing and does not provide the same benefits.

You're free to put me down as some esotheric crank. But my conviction is that a healthy diet is a mixture of not too much crap and sometimes a bit crap, because it's fun and makes you feel good and gives you pleasure.

Nutrition, in my opinion, is much more complex than the ingredients that you put into your body.

edit: A couple spellos

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#108

Post by IloveHN84 »

arkades wrote: post #40
IloveHN84 wrote: post #21

I'm in a holding pattern to since more than 6 weeks now because of increased values of the liver. No alcohol, no smoke, always trying to be fit with 3x week sport. Became suddenly yellow, done the liver-biopsy, nothing came out and still with high liver values (GPT, GOT). None of doctors have a fucking idea of what I have. Done all tests against all the kind of Hepatitis, but all of them were negative.

Interested in elaborating and sharing some lab values and biopsy findings? Sounds interesting.

Byopsy found a light inflammation of the tissue, but nothing was considered harmful and cleared even more the case of hepatitis-free condition.

The maximum level of GPT touched the 27 Units/L (now 9.5), when the maximum value allowed is 0.75 and the bilirubin skyrocketed as well, now at 70 (vs. 25). GOP stays around 3.5 U/L (max allowed: < 1)

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#109

Post by YinglingLight »

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.

Lol. Guess this means I live life on the edge.

Re: Green tea supplements ruined my liver

#110

Post by camtarn »

arethuza wrote: post #67
tmoravec wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to share a spoiler? :-)

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...

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