Green Tea Side Effects
Although a plethora of health promoting and medicinal properties have been associated with green tea, there seems to be a handful of reports that implicate the drink in triggering certain adverse albeit mild, side- effects. In order to obtain a candid assessment of the safety and benefits of the drink, one should take into account its drawbacks alongside its beneficial effects.
To those who are predisposed to frequent attacks of heartburn and stomach ulcers, drinking ten or more cups of green tea on a daily basis can aggravate the symptoms. Such rare cases of upset stomach in green tea drinkers have been attributed to the presence of low levels of caffeine in the drink.
Caffeine is known to stimulate the increased secretion of gastric juice, which can rise up from the stomach, enter into the esophagus and cause heartburns. While it is true that green tea contains only reduced levels of caffeine compared to other beverages, the levels might just be sufficient to induce adverse side-effects in the minority of drinkers, who exhibit increased sensitivity to caffeine.
Green Tea and Fluoride Content
Green tea has also come under criticism for its fluoride content. Drinkers, who consume green tea in moderation, reap benefits from the drink’s low fluoride content since at low concentrations, fluoride is beneficial to the bones and helps prevent the formation of dental cavities.
However, extremely scanty reports of fluorosis or fluoride poisoning, induced by green tea also exists. A close scrutiny of such isolated cases, however, confirmed that the victims of fluoride poisoning have been guilty of consuming more than 17 cups of green tea over the course of a single day. Such high levels of fluoride, owing to excessive tea intake, can be harmful to the teeth and the bones and can result in enamel (dental) as well as skeletal fluorosis.
Apart from such scattered reports of moderately severe side effects of green tea consumption, a small number of other, less severe adverse effects have also been documented. For instance, green tea has been reported to interfere with the body’s ability to uptake iron from certain foods.
Also, since green tea contains several biologically active ingredients (that confer health benefits), there is a possibility that these molecules can potentially interfere with and therefore modify, the effects of other medications. A simple way to avoid this potential complication would be to allow a time gap of at least two hours between medication intake and green tea consumption.
A common theme that runs through all these reports of green tea side-effects is that, like any other health drink, food supplement or nutrient, excessive consumption can have negative influence on the body. Clearly, drinking green tea in moderation will confer tremendous health benefits to the drinker without inducing any adverse side effects.
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Dear writer,
Regarding Fluoride, you state that people who developed fluorosis where consuming over 17 cups of tea per day. Would you be kind enough define the size of a cup; there is a lot of confusion as to what volume a cup of green tea represents. In the anglo-saxon world a cup represents either 8 oz (236 mls) or 250mls, in Japan a cup of green tea represents only 6 oz of the beverage. There is a huge difference between 17 x 6oz cups and 17x 8oz cup (33% delta). Could you provide links to the study in question. BTW current research indicates that even low levels of Fluoride are considered toxic (remember that the research that indicated that fluoride is beneficial came at a time when cigarette smoking was considered beneficial; doctors were quite primitive back then). Chinese research indicates that higher quality tea is low in fluoride and that low quality or Puer tea is extremely high in fluoride.