The man who almost died from drinking too much tea

[Opti]

In May 2014, a 56-year-old man arrived in the emergency department at the veterans' hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas.

He reported vague symptoms: weakness, fatigue, and body aches, all of which had been going on for a while but were getting worse. The emergency-room team drew some of his blood and found it bursting with a waste chemical called creatinine—more than four times the normal level. That meant he was experiencing severe kidney failure.

Doctors started urgent dialysis, cycling the blood out of the man's body and through a machine that cleaned it in lieu of functional kidneys.

The University of Arkansas physicians who managed the case were perplexed, they report in the current issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

What causes an otherwise healthy person to develop renal failure? Another clue further confused the picture: tests of the man's urine found oxalate crystals at more than twice the upper limit of normal. When they show up in those quantities, doctors are taught to ask if the person has been drinking antifreeze, because ethylene glycol can cause oxalate crystals to accumulate. This man denied drinking antifreeze—which people who drink antifreeze tend to do.

But the doctors didn't need to pursue that line further because, they report, "on further questioning, the patient admitted to drinking 16 eight-ounce glasses of iced tea daily."


He had been brewing the tea at home, and luckily, despite the southern tradition, it was unsweetened. Black tea constitutes upwards of 80 percent of the tea consumed in the United States, and it is high in oxalate, a chemical that is a metabolic byproduct in many plants.

www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-man-who-almost-died-from-drinking-too-much-tea/ar-AAauHYu?ocid=iehp

[moneymaven]

DH drinks a lot of tea but not that much! Who can drink 16 glasses of anything per day?

[Deleted]

You can also get ill from drinking too much water.  Sixteen glasses of H20 would probably qualify.

[cronewitch]

That is only 8 16oz glasses or 4 quarts. If someone doesn't like coffee, water or soda they might drink that much especially on hot days working outside. I like mine very weak but if someone enjoyed strong tea they might get that much from less quantity.

[milee]

Just reading this thread is making me need to use the bathroom.

Each morning, I brew up 6 green tea bags in about 4 cups of water and drink that throughout the morning over ice - iced green tea. It's super healthy, but makes me feel like I live in the dang bathroom. I can't imagine how often this guy was running to the bathroom with that much liquid and caffeine in him.

[steph08]

So the guy is drinking 8 x 16 = 128 ounces (or 1 gallon) of iced tea a day.

If that is the only liquid he is drinking, I can see drinking that much, if he has an active lifestyle. When I am running and it is a high mileage week, I try to drink 100 ounces of liquid/day.

We grew up on iced tea, and it is still the main thing that my dad drinks - but he switched to iced green tea (made at home, 6 tea bags, 2/3 cup of sugar, I think it makes a half gallon or 3/4 gallon). I bet on a hot day, he drinks 9 8-ounce cups.

I still use black tea to make my iced tea.

I have personally drank 6 eight-ounce glasses of iced tea already today. Yum, iced tea.

[milee]

Oh, I can totally see drinking that much liquid. On a hot day here, working outside I definitely drink a gallon a day. But most of it is water.  Or, like your dad, it's tea but fairly weak when you consider the amount of tea bags to the amount of water and ice.

I can't imagine drinking a gallon of something like regular strong tea that has caffeine in it. Again, I'm crossing my legs just thinking about it. 

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

There is a guy in one of my classes that brings in a clean, gallon milk container that he drinks full of water each day.  He'd pretty much empty the container on the days that we had 2 consecutive classes (about 4 hours).  That's 128 oz and he said that he drinks at least 2 of them each day.

This guy drank the same amount of iced tea, so yes.....I can see drinking that amount of liquid.

[Opti]

I posted the OP because I found it scary that drinking that much black tea could

cause kidney failure. It does appear the oxalates are lower in green and white teas.

www.healwithfood.org/articles/green-tea-oxalates.php

Oxalate Content of Tea

According to a study published in the Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2002, loose black tea leaves contain 5.11 milligrams of soluble oxalates per one gram of tea leaves. Black tea in tea bags contains slightly less oxalates: 4.68 milligrams per 1 gram of tea leaves. When tea is steeped, some of the soluble oxalates leach into the hot water. The amount of oxalates provided by one cup of black tea made by steeping loose tea leaves is estimated to range from 4.41 milligrams to 16.43 milligrams. The oxalate content of black tea made by steeping tea bags is estimated to vary between 2.98 milligrams and 15.61 milligrams per one cup of steeped tea. For the sake of comparison, spinach – which is considered one of the most oxalate-rich food sources – contains 970 milligrams of oxalic acid per 100 grams (3.5 oz).

Green tea and oolong tea contain less oxalic acid than black tea. According to the same study that compared the oxalate content of loose leaf vs bagged black tea, the soluble oxalate content of green tea and oolong tea ranged from 0.23 to 1.15 mg per one gram of tea leaves.


Source: www.healwithfood.org/articles/green-tea-oxalates.php#ixzz3XE2hXRvN

[movingforward]

I have a co-worker who drinks a 12 pack of diet coke per day   A couple of months ago she came in with a gallon of iced tea from Chic-fil-A.  She said she was trying to be healthier by switching to tea .  I am pretty sure a gallon of anything is probably not good.  She is extremely overweight though so maybe a gallon to her is not like a gallon to an average size person.  At any rate, the tea didn't last very long.  She quickly converted back to diet coke.

[Opti]

If she's over 256lbs., drinking a gallon of liquid a day sounds reasonable.

Not all diet Coke though. Before this article I would have thought having

most of your liquid as iced tea would be OK health-wise.

[Tennesseer]

Apr 14, 2015 8:52:22 GMT -5 movingforward said:

I have a co-worker who drinks a 12 pack of diet coke per day   A couple of months ago she came in with a gallon of iced tea from Chic-fil-A.  She said she was trying to be healthier by switching to tea .  I am pretty sure a gallon of anything is probably not good.  She is extremely overweight though so maybe a gallon to her is not like a gallon to an average size person.  At any rate, the tea didn't last very long.  She quickly converted back to diet coke.

With all that carbon dioxide gas in that 12 pack of diet soda, does she also have a flatuation problem at work?

[movingforward]

Apr 14, 2015 9:07:54 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Apr 14, 2015 8:52:22 GMT -5 movingforward said:

I have a co-worker who drinks a 12 pack of diet coke per day   A couple of months ago she came in with a gallon of iced tea from Chic-fil-A.  She said she was trying to be healthier by switching to tea .  I am pretty sure a gallon of anything is probably not good.  She is extremely overweight though so maybe a gallon to her is not like a gallon to an average size person.  At any rate, the tea didn't last very long.  She quickly converted back to diet coke.

With all that carbon dioxide gas in that 12 pack of diet soda, does she also have a flatuation problem at work?

IDK - We have our own office (thank goodness!).  I don't notice any horrible smell when I am in her office though.

[andi9899]

I was afraid to drink the water when we went to Mexico to visit Baby Daddy's family. We didn't go to the tourist type place, we went to the no running water type place. I drank coke and beer for a month. I got so sick!

[Virgil Showlion]

This story doesn't surprise me.

South American ranchers feed copious amounts of black tea to their llamas when they want to thin the herds. They have to be very careful to give the llamas just the right amount of tea to kill off only the weakest ones. Too much and an entire herd can die.

We actually get a common English word from the practice. Since killing off a herd is a calamity, the word 'calamity' naturally derives from "cull llama tea".

[Sam_2.0]

I can easily drink a gallon of tea in a day. Heck, add in about half a gallon of black coffee too. Plain water makes me want to gag. At least I drink them unsweetened