(xpost) 'The food supplement that ruined my liver'

[nitpicker]

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-45971416

'The food supplement that ruined my liver'

9 hours ago

Jim McCants took green tea capsules in a drive to get healthy in middle age. His doctors now say they left him needing an urgent liver transplant, writes the BBC's Tristan Quinn
(snip)

As part of his mid-life health kick, Jim had started taking a green tea supplement because he had heard it might have cardiac benefits. These supplements have grown in popularity in recent years, often breathlessly promoted online for their antioxidant benefits, and their supposed ability to aid weight loss and prevent cancer.

"I felt fine then," remembers Jim, who lives in Prosper, north of Dallas. "I was walking or running 30-to-60 minutes, five or six days a week." He was working as a finance manager but hoped to retrain as a physician's assistant. "I was taking two or three classes at a time at nights and at weekends," he recalls.

He had been taking the green tea supplement for two to three months when he became ill. According to Jim's medical record this is the presumed cause of his liver injury. "It was shocking because I'd only heard about the benefits," remembers Jim. "I'd not heard about any problems."

After his admission to hospital, Jim went into a "holding pattern", waiting for the results of a series of blood tests to establish the seriousness of his liver injury. Then, about three weeks after his wife had first noticed he looked ill, one of his liver doctors delivered the news he had been fearing: "She said you need a liver transplant. This has to happen fast. You have days - you don't have a week."
(snip)

"If you are drinking modest amounts of green tea you're very safe," says Prof Herbert Bonkovsky, director of liver services at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, who has been tracking injuries linked to green tea supplements for nearly 20 years. "The greater risk comes in people who are taking these more concentrated extracts."

Concern has focused on a potentially toxic ingredient called Epigallocatechin-3-gallate or EGCG, the most abundant of the naturally occurring compounds with antioxidant properties in green tea, called catechins. There are likely to be a number of factors that might make an individual susceptible to harm from EGCG including genetics, and the way supplements are used.
(snip)

[octoberlib]

1. Good thing to know. Thanks for posting!

[Mike Nelson]

2. Someone told me...

… green tea would be good for energy, as a sub for more coffee (which makes me bounce off the walls after my regular morning cup). And it was so HEALTHY, I'm told... stopped as I didn't like the feeling. Felt sort of anxious. Also, recently, "acidophilus" was recommended by a relative. It make me feel sick. Threw it in the trash... I'm not saying these things don't work for some people, but they're not for me.

[DFW]

3. ALL those supplements make me nervous

Some company making up pills has no earthly clue what is good for my particular metabolism and what is not. If I want green tea, I either make it myself or order it when I'm at a Japanese restaurant (O cha kudasai!). Same goes for all other anti-oxidants. I eat blueberries, broccoli, etc. but I think that (as a rule, anyway) if Nature had intended for anti-oxidants to be taken in concentrated pill form, she would have made antioxidant pill trees.

[Ilsa]

4. Some energy/vitamin drinks will also

throw your liver enzymes out of whack. A drink they recommended daily is one I can have only about once a week.

[watoos]

5. How many of you take Prilosec?

My buddy who was born with just one kidney got cancer in it. He went to the Cleveland clinic. His surgeon took out 30% of his liver from the cancer and 40% from Prilosec. He is doing just fine on 30% of one liver with no dialysis.

[IronLionZion]

6. I'm drinking a morning cup of green tea as I read this

just drink the tea. I wouldn't trust many of these supplements.

[bucolic_frolic]

7. oolong tea is good

I find it a milder stimulant than coffee.

Too much of anything can cause harm. I feel very different depending upon what I eat. 5 day pizza binges for example, or a donut 36 hour marathon. Nothing like mild sautee with lots of veggies, lite protein, and a low sugar diet.

[ProfessorPlum]

8. the "nutriceutical" industry in this country is completely unregulated. It is a national disgrace

And this poor guy is just one of its many victims.

[The Conductor]

10. The Neutraceutical gang...

Remind me so much of the Elixer Sulfaniomide scandal back in the 1930s. Most of the anti-regulation types have never heard of that, of course. The sulfa drugs were the first class of effective antibiotics. Unfortunately, at the time, no testing of any kind was required, and the companies could hire anyone to make up the drugs, just as the neutra gang does now. One chemist got it in his head to use ethylene glychol as a preservative; you know it today as antifreeze. It is poisonous, of course, and more than 100 people died, many of them children.

At the time, the government didn't even have the power to pull a dangerous product off the shelf, so those deaths continued even after it was clear that all of the dead had used the same medicine. And, all the while, the manufacturer continued to insist it was perfectly safe.

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

[Hortensis]

9. 2015 is the oldest year I found on a quick search for green tea

warnings. This is what came up on the first screen only, didn't look farther.

By far most articles reporting hepatotoxicity were published starting in 2017 and building numbers in 2018.

[Richard D]

11. It may not just be the green tea

If green tea itself caused liver damage, there would be a lot of liver damage cases in China and Asia. I don't believe this is so.
I wonder what else was in the capsule, as few supplements are just one thing. Also, perhaps he was taking a lot of these in the very American idea of if some is good, a lot will be better.

The quality of the tea might also be an issue. Much of the tea from China is contaminated with heavy metals.

Of course, the possible genetic predisposition to EGCG damage could be something that was edited out of the gene pool in Asia.

[ProfessorPlum]

12. You can stop wondering and read beyond

The first paragraph. Your ideas are addressed