Can drinking re-steeped tea cause kidney failure?

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tinyteanut
tinyteanut Posts: 1 Member
in Food and Nutrition
The office I work at is pretty cold so I drink green or jasmine tea all day long. I don't use a new teabag every time I brew a new cup but I refill my mug (350 ml) around 8-10 times daily, going through 1-2 teabags a day- maybe 3 at the most.
So far I've roughly been doing this for about a year.

My curiosity stems from seeing a video by CBC Marketplace about people developing kidney failure from taking green tea diet pills and seeing an article about a man who also got kidney failure after drinking roughly a gallon of iced tea daily.

I'm not a tea expert by any means- Is my habit of drinking 8+ cups of re-steeped tea daily bad for my kidneys?

Replies

  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 33,968 Member
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    I guess you'll find out.

    I don't think it's good to have eight of anything - green tea, slices of bread, apples, whatever. I don't think re-steeped tea sounds like a disaster, though.

    Can you just switch to some other herbal tea after a couple?

    Sounds like catastrophising over nothing, to be honest.
  • Copper_Boom
    Copper_Boom Posts: 85 Member
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    I daily go through 5 or 6 teabags (black and green) and have been for years. No kidney problems yet!
  • ecjim
    ecjim Posts: 1,001 Member
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    I regularly drink sweet tea - 2-4 tea bags worth per day + coffee & my kidneys are fine -
  • cathipa
    cathipa Posts: 2,991 Member
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    Considering he was drinking a gallon (128oz) of tea daily this is excessive. As the article states they are unsure if it was sweet or not and he was also a diabetic. I'm surprised they are quick to dismiss this as a contributing factor since this quantity does not sound like it was something new for him. Either way only 3 bags of tea should be fine weather its re-steeped or not its still only 1 serving per bag.
  • ata1anta
    ata1anta Posts: 115 Member
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    I wouldn't worry about it. A lot of X causes [disease] comes from anecdotal evidence - I do thus and so and have [disease] therefore thus and so caused it. Without scientific evidence, there is no actual conclusion.
  • LINIA
    LINIA Posts: 1,046 Member
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    Dear OP

    Thanks for posting, I drink tea exactly like you do and am happy for so many sensible answers. I begin the day with 2 cups of hot tea almost everyday.
    IMHO tea is good for us and I never worry at all about reusing tea bags.
  • Lounmoun
    Lounmoun Posts: 8,426 Member
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    I guess you would have to figure out if the oxalate content of your tea is too high at that amount. Green tea has less than black tea. If you brew your tea longer it can change the amount of oxalate. I don't think you really need to worry unless you already have problems.
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12495262
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3963632/
  • tuddy315
    tuddy315 Posts: 11,336 Member
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    My roommate drinks a half gallon of regular Lipton brewed tea every day (I know because I make it for him), as well as a half gallon of water and 3-4 Pepsi's. He has no kidney problems.
  • dsboohead
    dsboohead Posts: 1,900 Member
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    Sounds like hooey to me.

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