How much tea is too much tea?

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tjkdubya
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Sat Sep 28, 2019 2:02 am

I think I go through anywhere from 5g to 20g of tea on a typical day. So that's roughly 400 mL to 1.5 L of brewed tea?

Who knows what 16 glasses of black tea means, but if that's 16 x 2.5g tea bags ... 40g of tea a day, every day. Yikes.
carogust
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Sat Sep 28, 2019 6:20 am

Sometimes I wonder how you people manage to drink more than a single session in a day. I can't do more than one and find it pleasant or enjoyable.
First of all I get very bothered that I am spending more time on tea than I should. Feels like a waste of time. I find it more preferable to give all of my attention for a tea once in a day, rather than multiple distracted ones...
Second is that I start to get angsty, unfocused and thinking feels foggy. A mild uncomfortable feeling. If I keep tea down to a single session I don't get that at all.
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There is no self
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Sat Sep 28, 2019 11:27 am

carogust wrote:
Sat Sep 28, 2019 6:20 am
First of all I get very bothered that I am spending more time on tea than I should. Feels like a waste of time.
At the risk of sounding cheesy, I think it depends on what you get out of a session: pleasure, knowledge, tranquillity, and so on. Personally, I find it essential to have the time to unwind and focus on something that's not the usual problems and things to do. I do agree that having more than two sessions in a day makes it lose that peculiarity. "Rites are important".
Also, and I'm sure I'm not alone here, nearly half the tea I drink in a day I drink in a more relaxed way: grandpa-style in the morning, mint tea after a good meal, etc. So there's that.
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Baisao
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Sun Sep 29, 2019 7:34 pm

Bok wrote:
Sat Sep 28, 2019 1:24 am
Yesterday I had my first bad reaction to tea. A session with tea friends, where we had at least a dozen of teas, ranging from Tieguanyin, Yancha, aged Dancong, fresh Dancong, Baozhong, hongcha, bug-bitten Hybrid Oolongs, oriental beauty fresh and aged to Puerh fresh and aged.

What killed me and provoked an immediate sensation of feeling unwell was the fresh Puerh. One guy had brought tiny coin sized cakes from big trees. While the taste was ok, the reaction was not. Weirdly the first thing I noticed was the urge to burp !? Then I got the feeling I normally only get when drinking a teabag of Assam, say TG Tipps on an empty stomach... yet in this case my stomach was well prepared.
Young sheng wrecks my stomach every time. Reflux, like you describe, and an achy feeling in my tummy. It’s also too stimulating for me so I just avoid it regardless of how well my friends tolerate it.

I truly think that these reactions are individual in nature. I have a friend who cannot drink green teas, sometimes the very same greens that I find so agreeable, yet he can drink young sheng and I cannot.
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Bok
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Sun Sep 29, 2019 8:21 pm

@Baisao glad I’m not alone with this... in the group of seven we were only the guy who brought it seemed to be able to tolerate it!

It might have been a bit unfair, as all the other teas tasted where premium, mostly organic and some even wild tea leaves.

The guy insisted on some sort of throat sensation which apparently was different to factory made tea. Anyways no one agreed haha
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Baisao
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Mon Sep 30, 2019 11:13 am

Bok wrote:
Sun Sep 29, 2019 8:21 pm
Baisao glad I’m not alone with this... in the group of seven we were only the guy who brought it seemed to be able to tolerate it!

It might have been a bit unfair, as all the other teas tasted where premium, mostly organic and some even wild tea leaves.

The guy insisted on some sort of throat sensation which apparently was different to factory made tea. Anyways no one agreed haha
Novelty shapes are usually a bad sign. The worst pu I've had has been in novelty shapes.

Regarding the throat sensation argument as it pertains to factory teas is exceedingly odd. The only thing that I can think of is the possible presence of camphor. This is hearsay, but I think that some factories place their teas on camphor wood racks. That camphor aroma can be felt in the throat and sometimes smelled, but why only factories and not small producers? I don't know which way he was arguing but that's all I can figure.
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belewfripp
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Sat Jan 21, 2023 6:47 am

Glad to see this subject come up, as i have been without tea for over 6 months as a consequence of persistent and strong negative reactions to tea whenever I would drink it. The symptoms Bok describes are exactly what I get when I have a greatly distressed stomach - whether from tea or not. I had gained 15 pounds during the pandemic, and then lost it all in one month in June of this year because I could barely stand to eat. Multiple other health issues unrelated to tea.

One of these was a tendency towards intense panic attacks, something I'd never experienced to this degree (nightly for > 1 month), and tea seemed to exacerbate things. No matter what sort of tea it was - good oolong, aged shou, fresh green, it always went the same way - a sudden, dawning sense of fear and a feeling like something was pushing out against my face and arms, compelling me to get up and walk around incessantly to give my body something to do, and hope that it would go away. If a tea produced any kind of "qi" or body effects, it would make it even worse as somehow the sensation stopped being pleasant and instead became very much not.

Eventually, things got to the point where even a small cup of generic black tea or some Harney & Sons Earl Grey would produce the exact same effect after very small amounts of tea. I conjectured it could be caffeine sensitivity combined with stomach distress - reflux attacks also trigger nervousness in me, or can - but interestingly my heart rate would stay in a normal range (unless I gave in to worry and truly panicked). My Dad says they had a patient at our local hospital (he is a doctor) who died of liver failure from "drinking Chinese tea" and wants me to not drink any tea anymore at all. Of course, he can't tell me what kind of tea it was, who she bought it from or where it is from ("China," he says, not realizing that saying you got your tea from China is like saying you got your cheese from Europe or your sandwich from America).

Anyway, I miss tea and have slowly started incorporating lightly-brewed dark oolongs and 20+ year-old shou, considering them perhaps a bit safer, and only having perhaps .8 L of tea a day. Curious, however, to know whether anyone else has experienced what I did or knows whether it is possible to overcome or if my tea-drinking days are done.
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Patjulian80
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Sat Jan 21, 2023 9:18 am

I would say it depends on the what, when, how and why.
Some teas have less caffeine than others (processing, type of fermentation, time picked, etc.) and brewing parameters play a role as well.
Last edited by Patjulian80 on Thu Feb 16, 2023 5:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Andrew S
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Sat Jan 21, 2023 3:38 pm

belewfripp wrote:
Sat Jan 21, 2023 6:47 am
One of these was a tendency towards intense panic attacks, something I'd never experienced to this degree (nightly for > 1 month), and tea seemed to exacerbate things. No matter what sort of tea it was - good oolong, aged shou, fresh green, it always went the same way - a sudden, dawning sense of fear and a feeling like something was pushing out against my face and arms, compelling me to get up and walk around incessantly to give my body something to do, and hope that it would go away. If a tea produced any kind of "qi" or body effects, it would make it even worse as somehow the sensation stopped being pleasant and instead became very much not.
I've never had an adverse reaction to tea generally (apart from young raw puer, which makes me uncomfortable and queasy), or any particular caffeine sensitivity (like Baisao, I used to drink dreadful quantities of coffee, and I sometimes still drink decent amounts of it if I literally don't have time to make even a cup of tea at work).

However, I did have a rather bad reaction after drinking some cheap fresh cooked puer from YS a long time ago (waking up in the middle of the night, irrationally convinced that I was going to be murdered in ancient times... and similar feelings that subsided over the next few nights, never to return).

Now, I can't prove that it was that dreadful tea that did it, but I'm blaming it anyway. What I can say is that I've never had anything even remotely similar since cutting both cheap fresh cooked puer and YS out of my diet.

You'd probably need proper medical advice as to what to do, or what not to do. All I can say is that it might not have been the mere presence of caffeine that was to blame, similarly to how I can drink 25g of tea a day, so long as it isn't young raw puer. I'm sure it's more complicated than that (but then, perhaps in your case it really was just the caffeine, or some other component that's common to all tea).

However, while I think that different teas have perceptibly different effects on people, I can't really imagine a doctor saying something like "You should be fine to keep drinking roasted wulong and aged heicha, so long as it you cut down on the young raw puer"...

Andrew
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Baisao
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Sat Jan 21, 2023 8:50 pm

belewfripp wrote:
Sat Jan 21, 2023 6:47 am
Glad to see this subject come up, as i have been without tea for over 6 months as a consequence of persistent and strong negative reactions to tea whenever I would drink it. The symptoms Bok describes are exactly what I get when I have a greatly distressed stomach - whether from tea or not. I had gained 15 pounds during the pandemic, and then lost it all in one month in June of this year because I could barely stand to eat. Multiple other health issues unrelated to tea.

One of these was a tendency towards intense panic attacks, something I'd never experienced to this degree (nightly for > 1 month), and tea seemed to exacerbate things. No matter what sort of tea it was - good oolong, aged shou, fresh green, it always went the same way - a sudden, dawning sense of fear and a feeling like something was pushing out against my face and arms, compelling me to get up and walk around incessantly to give my body something to do, and hope that it would go away. If a tea produced any kind of "qi" or body effects, it would make it even worse as somehow the sensation stopped being pleasant and instead became very much not.

Eventually, things got to the point where even a small cup of generic black tea or some Harney & Sons Earl Grey would produce the exact same effect after very small amounts of tea. I conjectured it could be caffeine sensitivity combined with stomach distress - reflux attacks also trigger nervousness in me, or can - but interestingly my heart rate would stay in a normal range (unless I gave in to worry and truly panicked). My Dad says they had a patient at our local hospital (he is a doctor) who died of liver failure from "drinking Chinese tea" and wants me to not drink any tea anymore at all. Of course, he can't tell me what kind of tea it was, who she bought it from or where it is from ("China," he says, not realizing that saying you got your tea from China is like saying you got your cheese from Europe or your sandwich from America).

Anyway, I miss tea and have slowly started incorporating lightly-brewed dark oolongs and 20+ year-old shou, considering them perhaps a bit safer, and only having perhaps .8 L of tea a day. Curious, however, to know whether anyone else has experienced what I did or knows whether it is possible to overcome or if my tea-drinking days are done.
This sounds like textbook panic disorder, including how it creeps into other things and limits your ability to live freely. It may be worth while to seek assistance from a mental healthcare professional.

If diagnosed with panic disorder, my personal advice is to avoid those who compound the problem by prescribing SSRIs and benzodiazepines. They can cause rebound panic attacks and are difficult to wean off of.

Best of luck to you!
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belewfripp
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Sun Jan 22, 2023 6:09 am

Thanks, everyone, I appreciate the information. Yes, I sought treatment last year for my panic attack issues and deliberately requested no SSRIs as they have had adverse and unusual side effects on me in the past. Instead, I specifically asked for a mood stabilizer that had helped me with other issues but which for one reason or another had gone without for 15 years.

I probably should have mentioned that, but was curious about tea specifically. Sounds like, unless a specific tea happens to be problematic, my symptoms are largely the result of the underlying issue and not the tea (though it does seem to be a likely trigger, as the study LeoFox posted shows).

I'm going to cautiously proceed with abbreviated sessions and see if the lowered caffeine consumption + my current treatment status (no panic attacks in > 3 months) allows me to resume some level of tea consumption. Thank you all again for your help.
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Patjulian80
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Tue Feb 14, 2023 4:03 pm

One way to know if you're drinking too much tea would be to have your vitamin and minerals levels examined—during a period when you're on tea and not. Your sleep quality is also another good indicator—again this would need to be tested. Last but not least, go off tea (and any other source of related stimulants) and see how you look, feel and perform (to use Robb Wolf's slogan).

I hope this helps.

Patrick
Last edited by Patjulian80 on Tue Feb 21, 2023 6:09 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Baiyun
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Tue Feb 14, 2023 9:28 pm

Patjulian80 wrote:
Tue Feb 14, 2023 4:03 pm
Hope to hear from you and I look forward to some engaging discussions perhaps?
Your two posts in this topic so far seem like you are interested in advertising your content rather than discussion.
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Bok
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Tue Feb 14, 2023 9:34 pm

in any case, I'd rather live a few years less with yellow teeth, than have less tea. :mrgreen:
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