Excessive Amounts of Tea Can be Harmful to Health, Concentrations of Fluoride in Black Tea can Cause Skeletal Fluorosis

The saying that too much of anything isn't good for you can certainly be applied to alcohol and chocolate, and chances are, it can be applied to just about anything. In any case, thanks to a recent study, you can add tea to your list.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit saw a 47-year-old woman suffering from excessive lower back, hip, leg and arm pain just because she was a little too sweet on the stuff. She was also missing all of her teeth because they had become so brittle.

Something was wrong with her bones, and sure enough, X-rays revealed that the vertebrae in her spine showed signs of a painful condition called skeletal fluorosis.  

When doctors gave her a blood test to measure the concentration of flouride in her system, she only had 0.43 mg per liter. A typical healthy person has less than 0.10 of a milligram of flouride per liter of blood, according to the journal report. 

Skeletal fluorosis can strike people who drink water with high concentrations of fluoride (much higher than in parts of the United States that add fluoride to the water supply). Industrial workers who inhale fluoride dust and fumes are also vulnerable, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Neither of those conditions was a factor with the Michigan patient. But she did admit to drinking a lot of black tea.  

For most people, black tea isn't a huge source of fluoride -- an entire liter typically contains 1 to 5 milligrams, though some reports put the figure as high as 9 mg, studies have found. But heavy tea drinkers have been known to develop skeletal fluorosis, according to the Los Angeles Times.

One thing's for sure--everything in moderation. Lesson learned.