Should I and how do I give up tea?! - 6 cups/day

[Came]

Hi,

This must sound like a very strange question but I do drink a lot of tea. Sometimes I can drink 10 cups a day, I think the average is probably around 5/6 but I've never counted. Right now there's 8 mugs next to me that I haven't taken down to wash yet but they're all from today or yesterday.

I need to cut down at least, but should I give it up completely? How much should I be drinking? I don't drink any coffee and never really have but I'm not sure how much caffeine is in tea, other than I'm quite sure it's less than coffee.

I don't drink much else though other than orange juice occasionally and water is a last resort - usually when I run out of milk. Anyone got any ideas or tips on how I should give it up?

Thanks,
James

[Clint Cora]

What's your concern? You might think about trying a variety of teas including green teas which are suppose to be quite healthy. Of course, no matter what kind of teas, one should limit the sugar intake.

[Came]

I don't have any sugar - just milk, and thinking about it it's probably more like 8 cups a day, is that not a problem? I'm more worried about the caffeine.

[JDuff]

Easy - buy decaffeinated tea bags!

[ButterflyWoman]

How much is too much does depend on the person, but eight cups of tea seems like rather too much (if I drank that much tea, I'd have heart palpitations).

If you try to give up the caffeine all in one go, you're going to get ferocious headaches for a few days, and be extremely irritable and feel very out of sorts. Thankfully, it only lasts a few days.

Easier, I think is to just taper it back, and that's easy to do with decaf tea. Replace one cup of caffeinated tea with one cup of decaf tea every day until you're down to a cup or two of caffeinated tea a day and you should be fine. If you want to go the distance and really kick the caffeine entirely, just keep going until you're consuming no caffeine, and only drinking decaf tea. You may still have minor withdrawl symptoms even after tapering it way back, but you can fix that by taking in just the smallest amount of caffeine (dunk a caffeinated tea bag in the hot water for just a couple of swishes, and then finish it up with decaf tea).

Caffeine is a pretty serious central nervous symptom stimulant. Too much is definitely not good for you.

[superfoodist]

I hate to sound extremely anal, but if you're going to be drinking this much tea, there's a few things you should keep in mind.

1.) Make sure your tea is organic.
2.) Avoid using sugar if possible. Try using honey, but only a small amount.
3.) Use purified, filtered water. Make sure your water has NO fluoride in it. Fluoride is one of the most volatile substances known to man (of course, the tooth care industry doesn't want you knowing this).

I've also heard that Black and Red Tea's contain Fluoride in them naturally, but I'm not exactly positive whether the natural version of fluoride is bad for you or not. It would be worth looking into, but to be on the safe side, I'd stick to other variations of organic teas.

Also, I'd stay away from Orange Juice as well. Ever wonder how EVERY single bottle of orange juice that you buy tastes the same? There's a reason for that. They won't put it in the ingredients list, but they actually use chemicals to give every batch the same "orange" taste. If you squeezed REAL orange juice into a cup, with different oranges - your orange juice would naturally taste different, because every orange has its own flavor change, even if minor. So keep in mind, if your a health conscious individual, that your "all natural" orange juice, might not be so natural.


Now, last, but DEFINITELY not least... Start drinking more water!!

Water is the most vital liquid for your body. In fact, upon waking, you should try to drink between 1-2 liters of purified water (remember, NO fluoride!!), before eating, or drinking anything else, and that includes tea. Then, continue adequate water consumption throughout your day.

If you want to keep taking in large quantities of tea, that should be fine, but remember to drink A LOT of regular water in between.

[Came]

Okay, I'll probably get decaffeinated tea to begin with, and then maybe stop completely. I'm not sure how much fluoride there is in the water, I'll check.

[Came]

According to my water supplier it is 0.340 mg/l

[kenya]

As you say, begin with decaffeinated tea first, and see any effects. Or you can just add something that you really hate in the cup, Maybe it can help you ease.

[Johnny Metal]

I drink as much tea as you, but mine is herbal red tea, mint, cedron, passionflower, etc. Red tea it's similar in taste to black tea, but contains no caffeine. And I have one of these:



Don't get the decaffeinated tea, it sounds gross. Once I went the herbal tea way, tea in teabags started tasting like ♥♥♥♥ to me.

[ButterflyWoman]

Originally Posted by Johnny Metal

Don't get the decaffeinated tea, it sounds gross.

It's fine. It tastes like tea. It's not any more gross than some herbal teas I've tried (raspberry leaf tea, for example, bleah).

As a matter of taste, I do prefer leaf tea to bag tea, but you can get decaffinated tea in leaf form.

[superfoodist]

Originally Posted by Johnny Metal

I drink as much tea as you, but mine is herbal red tea, mint, cedron, passionflower, etc. Red tea it's similar in taste to black tea, but contains no caffeine. And I have one of these:



Don't get the decaffeinated tea, it sounds gross. Once I went the herbal tea way, tea in teabags started tasting like ♥♥♥♥ to me.

Mmmm, where can I get one of those? And where do you buy non-bagged herbs to use for tea?

According to my water supplier it is 0.340 mg/l

Still too much, you don't want any fluoride in your diet. If your budget allows it, try and buy bottled waters that don't contain fluoride, or get a very good house filter.

[elucidate]

Originally Posted by ButterflyWoman

It's fine.

I think he might be comparing it to decaf coffee? Tea is not coffee though.

[ButterflyWoman]

Originally Posted by elucidate

I think he might be comparing it to decaf coffee? Tea is not coffee though.

Decaf coffee is fine, too, as far as I'm concerned. I drink it fairly regularly, and I'm a very picky coffee drinker (well, I am Melburnian, after all ). I was a tea drinker (still am) before I ever took up coffee drinking, though.

[elucidate]

Originally Posted by ButterflyWoman

Decaf coffee is fine, too, as far as I'm concerned. I drink it fairly regularly, and I'm a very picky coffee drinker (well, I am Melburnian, after all ). I was a tea drinker (still am) before I ever took up coffee drinking, though.

I can't 'do' coffee that often. Tea I love, though I don't really drink much of it. I do my best to drink lots of water though, filtered and hopefully not as full of crap as tap water?

[Cado]

Unless you're sensitive to caffeine it shouldn't be a concern. I drink between 8-10 cups of green tea per day without any adverse effects, and 10 cups is supposed to be the ceiling. With that particular kind you'd need to drink about 50 cups routinely to damage yourself.

I do find that drinking tea with ginseng in it helps offset any effects you'd get from the caffeine, and while this is purely anecdotal I think it helps to have an active mind as well. I'd probably be diagnosed with ADD or ADHD if I were tested (obviously I can't say for sure) and it actually helps me focus and utilize all that mental energy.

6 cups is nothing to be concerned about. If all you're doing is adding milk you should be fine.

[Came]

Okay thanks

[bodi]

I ditto what Cado said.

[cassiopeia]

I'd switch over to green and white tea (white tea especially). Also, is it possible for you to drink tea without milk? Tea is apparently much healthier without it (or you could go for soy milk). From Wikipedia:

Effect of milk on tea

A study[80] at the Charité Hospital of the Berlin Universities showed that adding milk to tea will block the normal, healthful effects that tea has in protecting against cardiovascular disease. This occurs because casein from the milk binds to the molecules in tea that cause the arteries to relax, especially EGCG. Milk may also block tea's effect on other things, such as cancer.[81] Other studies have found little to no effect from milk on the observed increase in total plasma antioxidant activity.[82] Teas with high EGCG content, such as green tea, are not typically consumed with milk. Previous studies have observed a beneficial effect from black tea which was not attributable to the catechin content.[83] Plant-based "milks", such as soy milk, do not contain casein and are not known to have similar effects on tea.
Milk binds catechins, most notably EGCG. Milk also binds tannin, rendering it harmless, which helps to exemplify the effect on tea's constituent parts (i.e. EGCG binding).[84]

source

[Razia]

ya 10 cups a day is dangerous,you should control urself instead of it have milk.

[stanmrak]

Originally Posted by superfoodist

Make sure your water has NO fluoride in it.

I've also heard that Black and Red Tea's contain Fluoride in them naturally, but I'm not exactly positive whether the natural version of fluoride is bad for you or not.

Also, I'd stay away from Orange Juice as well... So keep in mind, if your a health conscious individual, that your "all natural" orange juice, might not be so natural.

In addition to municipal drinking water, other sources of fluoride in your environment include processed cereals, fruit juices, soda, tea, wine, beer, chicken, fish, teflon pans, pesticides and cigarettes. Fluoride is not necessarily a natural component of these foods, more often, it's added in the processing of it.

Using drinking water as a transport for "medication" like fluoride is insane. (aside from the fact that it's toxic) Even if they measure it carefully, how would they know how much to add to avoid toxicity? Everyone who uses the water drinks a different amount... it could be 1 glass or 12 per day! An elderly person who is drinking a lot of tap water would get many times more than a younger person who drinks none, and could easily get excessively toxic amounts.

In addition to any fluoride in the water, the fluoride content of green tea is about about 3 parts per million, three times the recommended amount of 1 ppm set for drinking water by the EPA. The actual fluoride content of tea depends on the fluoride content of the soil in which it is grown, but tea leaves accumulate more fluoride than any other edible plant.

The longer a tea bag steeped, the more fluoride is released. Decaffeinated teas have an even higher fluoride content, probably due to high fluoride levels in the water used in the decaffeination process.

I've done a extensive amount of research into this topic, and haven't been able to resolve the issue of whether the fluoride content of green tea is problematic or not. Certainly, if you experience any bad effects from drinking green tea, I would stop drinking it as a precaution.

Ditto on the OJ info. Just because the label shows a straw stuck into a fresh orange doesn't mean that what you're getting. Whenever a food is processed (even if it says 100% "pure"), things are added or modified in ways that they don't have to tell you, and they're always bad!