The horrifying story of a woman who lost her teeth after decades of excessively drinking tea made me a little sick to my stomach. The 47-year-old mom from Detroit, Michigan was consuming extremely high concentrations of tea for nearly 20 years that caused her fluoride levels to increase more than four times what's considered the normal amount. Who knew tea could be so dangerous, right?
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Well, tea is actually good for you, when you don't consume too much of it like this woman was doing. She was experiencing some serious lower back, arm, leg, and even hip pains, when doctors discovered that the insane amounts of highly concentrated brewed tea was what was causing all her bone problems. Apparently U.S. brewed tea contains very high amounts of fluoride that if consumed too much can result in a rare bone disease known as skeletal fluorosis. And by "too much," I mean this woman was downing about a pitcher made with 100 to 150 tea bags a day. Wow.
As a result, not only had the woman's bones become very brittle, but her teeth were also so severely affected and needed to be extracted. Yikes! Imagine having no teeth at only 47? I'm actually the daughter of a dentist, so I guess you can say I'm EXTRA paranoid when it comes to my teeth and try to take really good care of them. Just knowing that this woman had to have her teeth removed, makes me instantly want to cut back on my tea drinking. Crazy, I know!
The woman was afterwards prescribed a tea-free diet and has been doing a lot better since. But please don't let this story discourage you from drinking tea! This only proves that any substance consumed excessively could result in harm–even if it's something as healthy as tea. And unfortunately, this isn't the strangest addiction I've ever heard of.
Believe me, I'm absolutely NOT suggesting you take tea out of your diet, just try to stick to drinking normal amounts and brush your teeth afterwards (if you can) to avoid stains. That's all!
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