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Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by fastball on Thursday October 25, 2018 @04:50AM (#18299454)
Did anyone else see a dosage that he was actually taking for these green tea supplements? It seems to be missing from the article but is arguably the most important point.

Anything is poisonous to the body in high enough doses.

Does the producer of these capsules (apparently Vitacost) specify a maximum dosage? If so, was Jim exceeding this recommendation? Or well under it?

Come on BBC.

Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by flarex on Thursday October 25, 2018 @05:09AM (#18299528)
From Vitacost's website:

Vitacost Green Tea Extract

Green Tea Extract (leaf) standardized to 98% polyphenols (490 mg), 80% catechins (400 mg), 50% epigallocatechin-3P-gallate (EGCG)(250 mg)

Amount Per Serving: 500mg

https://www.vitacost.com/vitacost-green-tea-extract-standard...

Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by flarex on Thursday October 25, 2018 @05:18AM (#18299557)
Study on the effects of EGCG on diabetic mice: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep40617

"In conclusion, despite of its well known favorable effects, EGCG could paradoxically exhibit nephro-toxic effect in the presence of diabetes"

Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by SmellyGeekBoy on Thursday October 25, 2018 @06:37AM (#18299865)
Seems especially dangerous in the case of a "weight loss" supplement where the people taking it might have some early form of weight-related diabetes and not even know it yet.
Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by illiac_1962 on Thursday October 25, 2018 @06:54AM (#18299936)
Yeah...the second I saw his Pic I knew this guy was a mess. At that age with a history of American diet he had to be primed with serious health issues. Can't excersize that away.
Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by SmellyGeekBoy on Thursday October 25, 2018 @06:35AM (#18299857)
I'd be surprised if it was anything other than the "dosage" stated on the box. Do people actually take more than the recommended dosage in the belief that the supplement will be even better for them? I guess it's possible but surely that would be newsworthy in and of itself if that were the case in this instance.
Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by illiac_1962 on Thursday October 25, 2018 @06:52AM (#18299923)
Yes, because it is very costly and difficult to get high amounts of the active ingredient that people are desperately seeking for their magical weight loss pill. People are dropping stupid amounts of green tea pills every day.

I chased all this shit until I got sick of it and adopted a whole foods plant based diet. No more added sugar or refined, processed crap. Weight dropped like crazy and I walk around literally euphoric compared to before. Same for my wife. No counting calories, no fad diets, no insane excersize schedule, no supplements other than iodide (seaweed), L-Glutamine, and top grade certified fish oil with vitamin D. Those are universally accepted supplements recognized and used widely in the medical community and are not nesseaary accept it is very expensive and time consuming to acquire and eat the amount of food required to get optimal levels.

Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by pjc50 on Thursday October 25, 2018 @05:45AM (#18299658)
Journalism is not an interrogation nor a transcript; you don't know whether that question was asked and he gave "I can't remember" as an answer.
Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by fastball on Thursday October 25, 2018 @02:13PM (#18303121)
If that hypothetical happened, then I would expect the article to say something like "we asked Jim how many of these pills he was taking, and he couldn't remember, but somewhere in the region of 3 per day".
Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by fastball on Friday October 26, 2018 @04:10AM (#18307554)
Journalism is a transcript of the most relevant information, and I happen to think the amount he was taking to be incredibly relevant.
Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by simion314 on Thursday October 25, 2018 @05:11AM (#18299535)
They mentioned that since the green tea was consumed from a long time it is clasified as food, so nobody is forced to test for side effects, dosage or effectiveness.

Other issues could be caused if the plant supplement contains also different plants, there could be similar plants that the plant collectors could slip in(by mistake or not) (I mean in general I do not know how the green tea is collected) , or the plants could be contaminated with pesticides, so I would avoid supplements if are not recommended by a doctor. As an example my son when he was young he liked carrot juice, so give it to him daily, when we went to the doctor she noticed he had is skin colored and told us to stop, I had no idea that too much carrots can be bad (it sucks that we are told that X is good for you but not that if you take too much X you will get ill)

Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by nemo846 on Thursday October 25, 2018 @06:00AM (#18299714)
> As an example my son when he was young he liked carrot juice, so give it to him daily, when we went to the doctor she noticed he had is skin colored and told us to stop, I had no idea that too much carrots can be bad

Well in your son’s case, it’s not harmful per se according to Wikipedia, Carotenosis is harmless - you will just look orange.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carotenosis

Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by Tor3 on Thursday October 25, 2018 @07:20AM (#18300037)
As another poster said, it's all about the dosage. Anything can be a poison. Even water - there have been several cases of people dying from drinking too much water, some side effect of taking ecstacy - they felt thirsty however much they were drinking.

Vitamin A is a classic: Too little, and you get blind and your feet start bleeding when you walk. Too much, and you get blind and your feet start bleeding when you walk.

Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by scns on Thursday October 25, 2018 @08:03AM (#18300234)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_A

since one egg yolk contains around 30% of the Vitamin A you need for a day, i limit my daily consumption to 3.

Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by logfromblammo on Thursday October 25, 2018 @10:42AM (#18301236)
I'm going to go out on a limb, just to be contrarian, and say that no amount of perfluorodecalin is poisonous. You can immerse yourself in it, fill your lungs with it, fill your entire digestive tract with it, and replace a significant amount of your blood with it. It is completely inert to biology, and is readily permeable to atmospheric gases.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorodecalin

Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by simion314 on Thursday October 25, 2018 @09:53AM (#18300874)
Thanks, I forgot the details since this happened 10 years ago, my point stands that the juice sellers did not warned about this side effect.
Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by fredley on Thursday October 25, 2018 @05:01AM (#18299502)
There is no 'dosage', because—as mentioned in the article—these capsules are classified as food, not medicine:

> What is it about green tea supplements that might cause harm at certain doses to some people? Scientists do not know for certain. Because green tea has been drunk for thousands of years, supplements consisting of its concentrated form are regulated in the US and Europe as foods, not medicines. That means that specific safety testing has not been required, so the scientific picture of how green tea supplements might affect our health is incomplete.

Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by beagle3 on Thursday October 25, 2018 @05:42AM (#18299647)
Same with water, table salt (NaCl), coffee, pomegranate juice and many other things.

Dose makes the poison, some people are capable of handling more, and some less.

Tea, among other things, has caffeine in it, and enough caffeine will kill you, but other than in pill form, you’ll likely not manage to get to the threshold because you’ll start vomiting way earlier.

It’s possible that there are other compounds harmful at high concentration. And of course, it’s not unthinkable that some of his pills were contaminated with something more dangerous.

But the dosage alone in some cases may explain enough of the damage.

Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by arkades on Thursday October 25, 2018 @06:10AM (#18299752)
Average caffeine pill is 100mg (roughly on par with a cup of tea or coffee). Caff can be fatal for adults at about 10g of consumption (Heckman 2010) - about 100 caffeine pills.

Caffeine toxicity can happen much earlier, but it's mostly concerning in combination with other substances. Caff on its own ... it's really, really hard to get to a dangerous dose inadvertently.

If the substance is pure, and the dosage is correctly labeled. Neither of which is especially common for nutritional supplements.

The key to this article is the line, "catechin doses at or above 800mg may pose health concerns." Pop over to amazon and look at one of the top results for green tea extract: https://www.amazon.com/NOW-Green-Tea-Extract-Capsules/dp/B00... A single pill is 160mg.

Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by ianai on Thursday October 25, 2018 @05:11AM (#18299536)
They might classify them as food but they’re not Whole Food. There’s a large difference between eating a whole food and taking out a single molecule from something and wrapping it in a bunch of filler material. The pills they showed looked like powdered tea, but I’d bet he was taking something much more concentrated.
Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by rawoke083600 on Thursday October 25, 2018 @08:04AM (#18300237)
If there is a relative chance of danger - they should include a warning ! My dishsoap has a warning
Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by zone411 on Thursday October 25, 2018 @06:33AM (#18299853)
There is no official "recommended" dosage and often the "maximum" dosage is just a guess too. Not the same as not being able to determine the dosage in each capsule or pill.
Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by lozenge on Thursday October 25, 2018 @08:19AM (#18300313)
That doesn't mean there is no dosing suggestion on the packet.
Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by nemo846 on Thursday October 25, 2018 @05:54AM (#18299696)
Supplements are effectively unregulated in the US if Last Week Tonight is correct.

https://youtu.be/WA0wKeokWUU

Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by illiac_1962 on Thursday October 25, 2018 @06:42AM (#18299886)
Not only that, this guy obviously has serious genetic issues. He is sickly.

The proven use is green tea... Not concentrated catechin powder. Good luck getting your hands on that without ingesting heavy metals or other toxins. All of this comes up when researching green tea.

Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by carlmr on Thursday October 25, 2018 @05:04AM (#18299514)
>Come on BBC.

You expect journalists actually doing their job in 2018? Get with the times.

Re:Green tea supplements ruined my liver by simion314 on Thursday October 25, 2018 @05:12AM (#18299542)
BBC has really good articles compared to other websites, and the website is also miles ahead of the others news sites that are posted here.