And now, a public health service

[Hades]

As your neighborhood Lord of the Underworld, collector of souls, and part-time mayor of a charming little village down by the coast, I thought I would share a bit of news with my fellow Elliquiy-ians, since it's such an obscure medical fact that many of you may not have been aware of already.   So go ahead, I'll wait while you sit down for your safety, before I blow your mind.
....
....
Ready?
Okay, so the big medical secret is *drum-roll*...drinking a pitcher of tea made of 100 tea bags daily for seventeen years tends to be very bad for your health.    Don't worry, I'll wait for your minds to recover.

In a somewhat more serious note, apparently a woman in Detroit, Michigan developed a rare bone disorder called skeletal fluorosis that comes from having too much flourine in your diet.  And since tea is a natural source of flourine, trying to bankrupt the Lipton company one pitcher at a time apparently gives you entirely too much flourine in your body to be removed naturally.  So it gets depoisted on the bones and ligaments and causes pain and other complications.

So the moral of the story?  An addiction to tea is a terrible thing.   Friends don't let friends brew excessively.   

*Original post about the woman's condition can be found here.

[Oniya]

One pitcher + 100 tea bags?  O_o  I think the most I've ever used was four.  Maybe 8 if it was a really big pitcher, or doing iced tea (where you brew it twice as strong because of all the ice you melt chilling it down.)

[Hades]

Yeah, that part threw me too.  I'm really hoping that it's a typo and they meant to say "10 bags".  Which is still more than I use personally, but at least that is a more reasonable number than 100.  >.<

[Oniya]

I just went and looked at 100 tea bags (actually, the Lipton box says 104.)  I can't imagine fitting much water into that pitcher once the tea bags were in there.

[Formless]

Wow ...

You know with all these medical discoveries about our food.

I,m waiting for them to say that " bread " is causing , god knows what ...

[Stella]

What colour are her teeth?!

[Thorne]

I keep telling people, lipton isn't tea. :/
I'm not sure what it is, but clearly, it's not TEA. Hair rinse, maybe. Or I'm just a tea-snob. *grin*  (yes. I'm a tea-snob, kind of. And I share! Tea and cookies for all. Or fudge, if you'd rather).


Is it just lipton, or do other brands of tea also run this risk?

[Hades]

...
Is it just lipton, or do other brands of tea also run this risk?

I think it's any type of tea.  The original article doesn't mention the brand that the woman drank, so I called it Lipton because I figured that was a brand that everyone would recognize when it comes to tea.

*Helps himself to some of the tea and cookies*

[Chris Brady]

I prefer Orange and White teas myself.

(Black is the most acidic, and you find in most Western style are Black, Orange is medium, and those are mostly East, as are the least acidic, or White Teas.)

[WindVoyager]

How much tea is that lady drinking? Far too much to be healthy if she got fluorine poisoning from it. She could be on that show, My Weird Obsession were those people have all manner of really unhealthy obsessions like eating chalk, deodorant and drinking gas.

[Oniya]

One pitcher a day for 17 years, made with 100 tea bags per pitcher.

[WindVoyager]

One pitcher a day for 17 years, made with 100 tea bags per pitcher.

Good gods. What color are her teeth? I'm hopping the 100 bags is a typo, that would be some nasty strong tea.

[Oniya]

I didn't check for myself, but there's apparently a scientific journal article that specified either the total number of teabags/month or teabags/year.  The 100/day was back-factored from that.

(Edit:  Now, that was a typo!)

[Endorphin]

Then there's the added factor that brewing the tea becomes abhorrently expensive in order to achieve that lofty goal.

I was going to say prohibitively expensive, but that doesn't seem to be the case, now, does it. :P

[Vekseid]

I keep telling people, lipton isn't tea. :/
I'm not sure what it is, but clearly, it's not TEA. Hair rinse, maybe. Or I'm just a tea-snob. *grin*  (yes. I'm a tea-snob, kind of. And I share! Tea and cookies for all. Or fudge, if you'd rather).


Is it just lipton, or do other brands of tea also run this risk?

Nothing in the article specifically calls out Lipton. In fact Lipton might be safer >_>

According to Wikipedia it's endemic to tea-growing regions in China. This woman developed a 'mild' case - getting to the point where it causes pain and stiffness. Apparently in crippling cases, it's highly deforming, and makes clean recovery from broken bones highly unlikely. Flouridation hardens bone matter, as expected, but makes it more rigid and thus brittle. Good idea for teeth, not so much fun for shins.

[Kippers]

I drank too much tea one  day and got sick and had an anxiety attack, but crap. I didn't know it could jack up my bones too. I'm doomed.

[Oniya]

It took her that much tea over 17 years to get a mild form of the bone disease.  It's only because the doctor recognized the symptoms from places where it's endemic that the cause was figured out so quickly.

Unless you're putting away a full box of tea per day, I doubt that you're doomed.

[Kippers]

Because your avatar is hypnotic and surreal, I will now believe you. I am not doomed.

*walks away with arms straight out like a zombie*

[Trieste]

What colour are her teeth?!

They aren't. NEJM article itself says, "Because of brittleness, all her teeth had been extracted."

[Oniya]

They aren't. NEJM article itself says, "Because of brittleness, all her teeth had been extracted."

Goes to show that you can have too much of a good thing (as Veks mentioned about fluoridation and bone matter.)

[Ryven]

I keep telling people, lipton isn't tea. :/
I'm not sure what it is, but clearly, it's not TEA. Hair rinse, maybe. Or I'm just a tea-snob. *grin*  (yes. I'm a tea-snob, kind of. And I share! Tea and cookies for all. Or fudge, if you'd rather).


Is it just lipton, or do other brands of tea also run this risk?

Lipton has its place just like Velveeta has its niche.  The South pretty much survives on the vast amount of sweet tea that is brewed from Lipton and other plain black tea brands.

[Oniya]

Lipton has its place just like Velveeta has its niche.  The South pretty much survives on the vast amount of sweet tea that is brewed from Lipton and other plain black tea brands.

I save the good cheese for family and friends.  PTO luncheons are another story.  ;D

[Ryven]

I save the good cheese for family and friends.  PTO luncheons are another story.  ;D

In order to make a good mac n cheese, usually velveeta is in there somewhere with a nice strong flavored cheese added.  The velveeta is just there for consistency, really.

[Trieste]

Yeah, I don't know if asiago and parm are considered strong flavored cheese but the mother of one of my high school friends used to make a killer mac and cheese with those and velveeta.

[Chris Brady]

Now I want some REAL Mac and Cheese...

[Love And Submission]

I prefer Velveeta  cheese solely because I hate cheese.  Seriously cheese is awful. Without hamburg or pizza  , it's useless.

I don't know how anyone can eat just cheese or cheese with mold on it.

[Thorne]

What, like bleu cheese? Bleu cheese is /awesome/. In small quantities - it is pretty strong.

I understand that a bechamel base is the 'best' way to make good mac and cheese - YMMV.
However, it's probably the way I'm using. Velveeta is banned from my house. Period. >.>

[mymistica]

It's getting scary to eat or drink anything anymore. Everything you hear is contradicting.
Tea is healthy, drink it! Oh, but don't drink too much - it's unhealthy! Water is healthy, drink it! No, don't drink that water - it's filled with fluoride!
So many foods are filled with GMO's, artificial food dyes, and who knows what else. We can't even trust food for our pets. My mom bought Blue Buffalo All-Natural Puppy Protection Plan puppy chow and it killed all of the puppies. The vet even said so - dog food poisoning. So much for all-natural.

I hope I make enough in my future career that I keep up a healthy home garden and learn how to prepare my own meals. I don't trust anything commercial, honestly.

[Oniya]

Um - moderation.  It's possible to drink enough non-fluoridated water to kill yourself by disrupting your mineral balance (hyponatremia - low sodium - is the usual diagnosis).  What this woman was drinking bears as little resemblance to actual tea as taking a 3-lb can of coffee (even good coffee), adding a cup or two of boiling water and trying to serve the resulting sludge as a beverage.

[Thesunmaid]

Smirks"well trying to quite drinking something can be bad for you too...This has to do with my old roomate. We would measure her coffee intake by pots per day...not cups...and she would drink upwards of 6 pots a day...how she slept or did not vibrate off the bed is beyond me. But anyway she also chain smoked...she would smoke probably about 4 packs a day.

Now she decided I want to be healthier...I am going to take care of myself...eat better quit smoking...drink water instead of coffee and exercise because she was getting sick and tired of well being sick and tired. Admirable right? We were all proud of her for it.

Sadly because of the sudden lack of caffeine and nicotine in her body..her already sickly body went into shock and she actually had a mild heart attack. Albeit in a convient place...the middle of the emergency room where she had taken her sister and her son for his ear infection. But still...I never thought I would see the day when a doctor told someone to start drinking coffee and smoking again.

So be careful...trying to be healthy is apparently hazardous to your health lol

Oh and Oniya....my friend actually made a drink for gaming cons...it was called vile. Because it was...very very vile. It was instant coffee put through a coffee perk about 4 times and then you would drink the resulting syrup...you would not sleep for the entire weekend(or blink really..or maintain a heart rate lower than that of a hummingbirds.)...but the crash was hard core...He actually was in mid sentence and pitched forward passing out...he was fine after that but we never let him make vile again.

[Oniya]

Oh and Oniya....my friend actually made a drink for gaming cons...it was called vile. Because it was...very very vile. It was instant coffee put through a coffee perk about 4 times and then you would drink the resulting syrup...you would not sleep for the entire weekend(or blink really..or maintain a heart rate lower than that of a hummingbirds.)...but the crash was hard core...He actually was in mid sentence and pitched forward passing out...he was fine after that but we never let him make vile again.

We called that 'paint stripper'.  ;D