#i spent an hour on google and pubmed getting increasingly peeved

[coldwind-shiningstars]

Hey, so I was not expecting this to get as popular as it is and I was very much not expecting the number of people who are now concerned because they like Earl Grey, so I wanted to clarify a few things

"Earl Grey will poison you" factoid actually just statistical error. Millions of people drink Earl Grey all the time and are fine. Earl Grey Georg, who drinks sixteen cups of it a day and nothing else, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

In case you have trouble picturing just how much tea this guy was drinking, here's a handy infographic made in MS Paint on the advice and with the feedback of @strictlyquadrilateral

ALT

More seriously, I'm not a doctor, much less your doctor! If you have symptoms and you want to cut out Earl Grey just to see if it helps go ahead, and I'm glad I could help! If you don't have symptoms and you drink less than 16 mugs a day of Earl Grey you're probably fine. This man was drinking a gallon of it and nothing else; case studies aren't solid proof of anything they're mostly just Hey This Weird Thing Happened. Almost anything can make you sick if you drink or eat enough of it, just do everything in moderation. In fact, some studies indicate that both bergamot and black tea may have health benefits, like these ones I found on a quick search: x x x (you can find a lot more on black tea specifically).

Re: blorbo from my research, here is my favorite ever case study. I'm obsessed with it.

Summary:

- Guy presents to neurology with muscle issues, very clearly has something going on but diagnostic tests are inconclusive

- History is mostly unremarkable. Key word, mostly. He drinks four liters of plain Earl Grey tea per day. For context this is nearly twice the recommended daily fluid intake. All fluids, to be clear, not just tea. He only drinks tea tho

- Bergamot is known to be phototoxic in high doses (reacts badly on your skin with sunlight)

- APPARENTLY nobody previously has consumed enough of it for it to be widely known that it is also, apparently, mildly toxic to ingest in high doses

- Guy starts drinking plain black tea again. Only 2 liters this time (he didn't have a medical reason to drink that much tea, he just liked it) and so now he's fully recovered