Every morning I would put 4 tea bags of green tea in a 2 liter pitcher of cold water and leave it in the fridge. I'd drink the entire thing everyday. I find it refreshing, especially on a hot afternoon.
Someone told me that I'm drinking way too much tea. Is this true? What's the equivalent, in terms of serving, am I drinking? I figure 1 tea bag = 1 serving. So even if it's in a 2 liter pitcher of water, it's still 4 tea bags no matter what. But my friend said that some people use their tea bags more than once. If the first cup you dip it in is as green as the second cup then your tea bag can do 2 servings therefore my 2 liter pitcher could actually be 8 servings.
If my friend is correct, it could be good news and bad news for me. 8 servings might be too much caffeine for me. On the other hand, the newspaper said that you need to consume a lot of green tea to get the health benefits.
I'm not a doctor, but, in me opinion, you drink too much tea and you are probably dependent on caffeine.
Try this experiment :
Don't drink any tea (and any other beverage containing caffeine) for three days. If get headaches or become irritable then you are drinking to much caffeine.
That depends on what substance in tea you are thinking of. Especially in tea bags (fannings & dust), you extract most caffine in the first steep, so leaving the tea in there to stew would only extract one "serving" of caffine per bag (keep in mind, though, that tea bags release more caffine than whole-leaf loose tea). However, there are whole oodles of other substances (polyphenols, essential oils, etc.) that are not always so quick to come out, so perhaps you are getting
1.5-2 "servings" of those per bag. Again, we don't know, since tea bags are not famous for more than 1 infusion. The powder contained therein realeases chemicals too quickly for more than 1 infusion, usually.
Why don't you try loose tea? If you're in the US,
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is a good inexpensive source of green tea (with whom I have no affiliation). If you're not, someone else would need to point you to a vendor. Loose tea is generally better tea than bagged, and loose tea is actually cheaper than the equivalent bagged (don't have to pay for bagging and marketing). Not to mention, most bagged teas are just left to go stale on grocery store shelves until they're bought way past their prime. A good overview of the loose vs bagged tea is on the rec.food.drink.tea FAQ, along with other good tea info:
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Highly suggested reading.
Not to mention, concerning health benefits, that loose green tea can further benefit your health because you can eat the used-up leaves. Eating these is supposed to extract the maximum health benefits. You can just swallow them with a gulp of tea, if wet leaves aren't in your usual diet.
Call me a self-deceiving junkie, but I reject the idea that if you're dependent on caffeine to the extent that sudden withdrawal gives you a headache you're necessarily getting too much of it. Being free of all dependencies seems a noble goal, but it doesn't top my list.
Nothing's set in stone here. A given drug may have widely different effect on one person vs. another person. One guy may sniff a 5x dosage of cocaine and feel absolutely no difference. For another person, even one cup of tea will make the heart run like hell. Incidentally, the very same person can be more susceptible to a small amount of caffeine than to a large dose of coke!
Listen to your body - your friend can't pull that off for you.
The key here is that you must not do anything until you feel the 'burnout' kick in. If you watch a movie or do some work, you'll be distracted and you may not notice the negative effect if there is any. Of course, it's easier said than done, it's hard to sit for an hour or two without being distracted. You can try to do something light that isn't very involving, for instance you can try drawing or just sitting in a park and watching squirrels or try meditation. If you want to find out if a given amount of caffeine is bad for ya, that's really the only way.
For me, even after a single cup, there's a noticeable although light euphoria followed by a burnout in about an hour or two (time will differ for you, most likely). That's 8oz medium strength cup. I practice yoga and eat light food mostly like fruits, vegies, and milk, and no salt or spices, so that may account for my sensitivity. I don't remember being so sensitive to caffeine a few years ago.
So, what I do is I only drink tea after a meal, and I drink 4-5oz of relatively weak tea.
If you're inclined to dismiss this concern over caffeine, try searching the 'net for cases of caffeine addiction. It can be very severe. What's worse, it can be very subtle: in one case I've read there was this woman who did not feel much physical discomfort but when she quit she realized a lot of her decisions in life were influenced by caffeine in subtle ways and if she wasn't drinking for 20 years, her life would be completely different! In a way, caffeine can be more insidious than 'hard' drugs precisely because people don't take it seriously and in particular because they don't take its subtle psychological effects seriously. "I'll worry about it if I start getting headaches."
OTOH if you're aware of dangers and keep an eye on it - no need to worry.
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