What You Can't Mix With Green Tea

Have you ever wondered how your food may interact with the medications that you've been taking? Let's take a favorite healthy drink: green tea, and we'll see what happens when you mix it with different pharmaceutical drugs. 

Green tea, used for cognitive performance, mental alertness, weight loss, osteoporosis, various cancers, HPV, Crohn’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, low blood pressure, chronic fatigue syndrome, dental caries, kidney stones, and skin damage, has been deemed likely safe in all areas other than possible caffeine overdose. 

However, the caffeine content in green tea interacts with many drugs such as adenosine, alcohol, amphetamines, diabetes, anticoagulants and antiplatelets, beta-adreneric agonists, cimetidine, clozapine, cocaine, dipyridamole, disulfiram, ephedrine, estrogen, fluconazole, fluvoxamine, lithium, mexiletine, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, nicotine, pentobarbital, phenylpropanolamine, quinolone antibiotics, riluzole, theophylline, and verapamil. Many of these drugs exasperate the negative side effects of caffeine. High caffeine may also increase urinary calcium and magnesium elimination. That's a lot of side effects of just caffeine! 

Bitter orange may interact with the caffeine in green tea to increase blood pressure and heart rate. Ma Huang, or ephedra, may increase the adverse effects of caffeine such as hypertension, myocardial infarction, stroke, seizures, and death.

Catechins in green tea reduce platelet activity in anticoagulants, decrease the uptake of nadolol in the intestine, inhibit organic anion-transporting polypeptides, and decreases absorption and bioavailability of folate.

Green tea polyphenols such as ECGC may decrease the efficacy of boronic acid-based proteasome inhibitors and bortezomib by blocking their inhibitory actions.

Additive effects may be seen with green tea and hepatotoxic drugs such as acetominopen, amiodarone, carbamazepine, isoniazid,

While this laundry list of interactions may seem scary, it's really just something to be aware of! It is a wake up call, because many of us would never even consider that the foods we eat and medications we take may affect each other. Are you taking other medications and want to know some of the interactions it may have? Drug Muggers by Suzy Cohen is a fantastic resource to really dig into how foods and drugs combinations may be helpful of harmful. 

Mills, S., & Bone, K. (2011). Principles and practice of phytotherapy (2nd ed., pp. 975-6). Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.

Natural Medicines,. (2015). Green Tea Monograph. Retrieved 29 February 2016, from https://naturalmedicines-therapeuticresearch-com.uws.idm.oclc.org/databases/food,-herbs-supplements/professional.aspx?productid=960