Is Too Much Green Tea Bad For Health? This Is The Ideal Amount

If you haven't heard them yet, the benefits of green tea will surprise you. Not only will this hot beverage of dried Camellia leaves boost your metabolism and prevent a cold, it is also a cure for depression, inflammatory bowel and low blood pressure. Sounds too good to be true? Well if you go binge eating on junk food and think drinking 10 cups of the tea will still help you in weight loss, that's a no. Like most things in life, too much of a good thing (read green tea) can harm you.


Also read Green helps to fight depression.

Exactly how much is too much?

Research at the University of Maryland Medical Center says that drinking more than 10 cups of green tea can reduce the absorption of iron from your food. This is because green tea is high in antioxidants, particularly flavonoids, that bind with nonheme iron. Iron is important for the production of haemoglobin in our body which are oxygen carrying proteins in the red blood cells. So it's best not to even have green tea while you are eating your food.

Additionally, even 5 cups of green tea can be too much for people who are sensitive to caffeine or have difficulty sleeping since each green tea bag can have 35 mg of caffeine. This makes green tea somewhat unsafe for people with anxiety disorders and high blood pressure.

Green tea is also not recommended in excess of 2 teacups for pregnant women. It has been shown that the tannins in it can decrease the absorption of folic acid. This acid is an important vitamin that helps decrease birth defects. There might also be an increased risk of miscarriage.
 

How much should I have?

According to Dr. Zuo Feng Zhang, a cancer epidemiology researcher at UCLA, and the University of Maryland Medical Center, two or three teacups of green tea is enough for you to get the positives out of it. The limit is upto 10, since there is evidence of a decrease in the risk of getting stomach cancer if you consume 5 cups of green tea every day. And of efficient weight loss if you are drinking 7 cups. Best to limit your intake to four cups.

Read green tea reduces blood cancer risk.