Green Tea Extract liver fears!!!

[alcopop]

Hi all
If you didn't know my main fear at the moment is liver damage due to past alcohol abuse.... I was starting to calm down yesterday, finally, after waking up today to an article on the BBC about how a guy got irreversible liver damage from green tea extract supplements. And that's exactly what I've been taking for the past three months! Link:

BBC News - 'The food supplement that ruined my liver'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-45971416

I'm now really really upset and panicky... as if i needed any other reasons to worry about my liver! I'd only been taking them to be healthy and that appears to have backfired.
Does anyone else take these?
Thanks in advance

[utrocket09]

Hi all
If you didn't know my main fear at the moment is liver damage due to past alcohol abuse.... I was starting to calm down yesterday, finally, after waking up today to an article on the BBC about how a guy got irreversible liver damage from green tea extract supplements. And that's exactly what I've been taking for the past three months! Link:

BBC News - 'The food supplement that ruined my liver'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-45971416

I'm now really really upset and panicky... as if i needed any other reasons to worry about my liver! I'd only been taking them to be healthy and that appears to have backfired.
Does anyone else take these?
Thanks in advance

Sounds like you were fishing for a silly story huh? The guy took extract probably every day for 2-3 months. Just because less than 100 were injured so not mean you will be injured.

[alcopop]

I didn't go fishing for it - it's the second most popular story on the BBC news website. It was the last thing I wanted to find.
I've been taking it every day for a couple of months too... that's what it says to do on the label...

[MyNameIsTerry]

There's a lot missing from this. The quoted expert mentions it may be a combination issue with meds, alcohol, dieting etc and there have been 80 cases historically.

This guy was on some meds as it says they checked whether they caused it. Therefore how do we know it wasn't a combination of the two?

He was also taking them for health and running. This may mean he was dieting too?

Since the medical community don't even know what causes this how can the companies be expected to put a warning on the label? Wouldn't that be scaremongering? If a link is proven they could put a more specific label on like many already do but otherwise they may be covering by the generic ones about taking medications alongside that suggest obtaining a doctor's view first.

Therefore this is just a less scaremongering form of a Daily Mail article as it's just not clear how this happened. Just more shoddy journalism for clicks.

[Mark1974]

I would be more worried about Asparatame - this almost screwed my liver up beyond repair and they don't have warnings about that on labels (granted I used to drink soft drinks by the gallon, but when they tell you alcohol is the main cause of liver damage and I rarely drink it makes you wonder)

[alcopop]

Hi all, thanks for your replies.

I agree it does seem like a scaremongering article. But as you can imagine how that was the last thing I needed to see this morning. Instant panic trigger....

Would you stop taking these if you had already been taking them based on this information? Or if you had liver problems would you not take as a precaution?

Thanks again

[Dave_Lister]

If I have learned anything from reading articles in the UK (I'm in Canada) they sure like to fear monger. I am not sure which publication it is, the Sun maybe, but any way, they always go to the worst case scenario, and report on a case that may be a 1 in a million type scenario like its common place.


I would take that report with a grain of salt.


My family is from Wales, and Bristol but I grew up in Canada, and I think it might be an English thing to expect the worst and you might be happily surprised. At least that was what i was told by my parents growing up. what a stupid way to look at life huh?

[MyNameIsTerry]

But do you have liver problems?

If I was unsure I would be asking a pharmacist or possibly my GP. I suspect they will not know much about because there isn't much to know other than what was reported about the 80 cases. So, they might advice caution because they simply can't say.

But what dose was this guy on (did it say in the article) and how does it compare to what you take? Supplements can vary greatly in strength.