America has long had a love affair with iced tea. Whether you talk about sweet tea in the south or lemon flavored tea found all over the country, Americans love their tea. However, this relationship was strained once the news broke about a man in Arkansas who passed away due to kidney failure from drinking iced tea.
The news this week of a man dying from drinking too much tea may come as quite a shock and shatter dreams of sitting under the sun sipping a cold glass of this All American favorite this summer. However, it turns out that there is actually little reason to worry, and there is no need to fear, unless you plan on downing way more than your fair share of the iced beverage.
Despite the man's death being directly related to his tea-drinking habit, the medical staff treating him could find no other cause for his sudden death, but did find out that the man was actually drinking up to 16 servings of iced tea daily. That's a lot of tea.
Tea in moderation is considered about as healthy as any other beverage outside of water. But with most things there are certain things in there that could cause the human body to be turned upside down. In the case of this man, the oxalate levels found in the high amount of tea the man drank caused his kidneys to shut down.
The medical team could not find any other reason for the kidney failure of their patient, but when they discovered that he had been drinking 16 glasses of iced tea a day, the team concluded that that the tea was actually responsible for their patient's death.
"With 16 cups of tea daily, the patient's daily consumption of oxalate was more than 1,500 mg - a level that is higher than the average American intake by a factor of approximately three to 10," explained the medical team treating the patient from Little Rock Hospital in Arkansas. "It could not be explained by any other cause in this case."
"We are not advising against tea consumption. If you are healthy and drink tea with moderation, it should not cause damage to your kidneys. If you're having two to three cups a day, you're probably OK as long as your family doesn't have a history of kidney disease."
Remember, too much of anything can be bad. Keep everything in moderation. If you do, you should be able to continue to drink iced tea without the fear of suffering kidney failure.
