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Food

This Teenager Got Hepatitis from Drinking Green Tea

After drinking three cups of the tea a day, the 16-year-old was rushed to the A&E department of a Birmingham hospital with severe liver inflammation.
Phoebe Hurst
London, GB
Foto von Frans Schouwenburg via Flickr

Green tea has long been the hot beverage of choice for Mason jar-wielding detoxers and those attempting to extract themselves from coffee's shakey embrace (give it two weeks.) It's calorie-free, it's natural, and it's green. What's not to like?

Coupla things, actually. In another case of Good Stuff That Is Actually Bad For You Now, doctors are warning that green tea could cause liver damage, after a teenager developed hepatitis from drinking the herbal beverage.

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According to a new report in British medical journal BMJ Case Reports, the 16-year-old first visited her doctor after drinking three cups of green tea a day for "a few months," complaining of nausea, dizziness, and joint pains. She was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and sent home with antibiotics.

READ MORE: Chamomile Tea Might Protect You from Dropping Dead

But after just two doses of the medicine, the girl started to suffer from jaundice, turning her skin and the whites of her eyes yellow.

The teenager was taken to the A&E department of a Birmingham hospital where she was found to have developed hepatitis. She told doctors that she hadn't consumed alcohol or drugs, travelled abroad, or undergone a blood transfusion—all activities that can lead to such inflammation of the liver.

She had, however, ordered Chinese green tea over the internet.

"I had bought the green tea over the internet to lose weight. I bought two boxes of 100 bags of tea and was drinking about three cups a day for a few months. I had only lost a couple of pounds but then started having horrible pains in my joints and felt very dizzy and sick," the girl told the report's authors.

After studying the tea bags, the doctors found that they contained camellia sinensis, a shrub used to make green tea that has been linked to cases of liver inflammation in the past.

The girl was treated with fluids and drugs through a drip to reduce swelling to her liver and was able to return home after a short stay in the hospital.

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"I was very scared when I was admitted to hospital and had lots of tests, I didn't fully understand what was going on at the time. Now I look back it was definitely due to the tea, I never took anything else and it all started happening after drinking the tea," she added.

The BMJ Case Studies report noted that while there have been previous cases of green tea-induced hepatitis, it is often the products added to the tea, rather than the leaves that can damage the liver—especially those from unregulated internet sources.

In a rather ominous concluding statement, the authors wrote: "The use of herbal remedies is under-reported, the breadth of use is under-recognised by clinicians."

A double shot, extra cream macchiato might go straight to your hips (and caffeine-frazzled brain) but at least your liver will be intact.