Like many people, you may be interested in things relating to your health and you might have been paying attention to these things for years. As you are about to see, however, there are times when something quite surprising can happen to our health from the most unexpected source.
In this instance, it was a teenager in England who began feeling nauseous and dizzy so she went to the doctor. The first thing that the doctor thought was that it could be a urinary track infection. After prescribing some antibiotics, the girl went home. She continued to get sicker, even after she took the antibiotics, so she went to the emergency room.
When the doctors were treating her, they saw that she had yellow in the whites of her eyes and her skin was yellow as well. This was an indication that there was a problem with her liver resulting in jaundice. As a result of the diagnosis, she went from being a normal case to a critical case. They thought that she had hepatitis because her liver had become swollen and inflamed.
It is not normal for a 16-year-old girl who is otherwise healthy to develop sudden hepatitis. They began to look into different situations that may have led to this condition. When they found out what actually happened, they were alarmed and the problem was bigger than they thought.
They began asking her questions about her travel habits, her use of drugs and if she used alcohol. Because she was not a candidate due to any of those reasons and she had not had a recent blood transfusion, the doctors were baffled. What they learned, however, is that she had been drinking a Chinese green tea that she ordered from the Internet. She drank it according to their instructions, 3 cups per day for several months.
She had been drinking the tea to lose weight and thought it could help as an appetite suppressant. The instructions were written in Chinese, so she didn’t know what they said or what she was drinking. When they tested a sample, they told her to stop drinking it immediately.
The tea contained an item known as Camellia sinesis, which is not uncommon in making tea. It is an extract of an evergreen shrub and it was responsible for the illness she was experiencing. She isn’t alone, because there have been other people who had a problem with liver damage and hepatitis when they used green tea supplements or extracts.
Women who had been using those green tea supplements and extract had sometimes had severe liver damage and needed a transplant. It had even resulted in the death of some individuals. They also suspected there were other chemicals being added so that the weight loss effect could be stronger.
Information about this particular case was written by the doctors for the Journal BMJ Case Reports:
“There is potential for pesticide-induced hepatitis to exist, especially from less regulated products ordered from developing countries over the internet.”
If you buy green tea online for this purpose, it can be difficult to research the quality of what you are getting. Doctors are urging that you should either be cautious or avoid buying it online.
This teenager was able to recover quickly and after she stopped drinking the tea for two months, her liver function returned. Doctors are using her case to highlight the dangers of drinking excessive green tea or varieties of green tea that promote weight loss. Those green teas may contain harmful substances, including pesticides.
Be sure you understand the brand of green tea you drink and limit your intake to a safe amount. Green tea is good for you, but only in the proper measure.
Make sure you share this story with others.