Kombucha under attack: is it somehow dangerous to your health?

Thursday, March 22, 2012 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: Kombucha tea, dangerous, health

(NaturalNews) Kombucha tea is becoming all the rage in popular culture today, with entire refrigerator cases at health food stores now exclusively stocking the stuff, and celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, Reese Witherspoon, and Orlando Bloom regularly drinking it for increased longevity and improved health. But with its growing popularity has come a whole lot of scaremongering by the disease industry over its supposed dangers, which begs the question -- is kombucha tea a potentially-dangerous fad, or is it truly the health-promoting wonder elixir that many people claim it is?

First of all, kombucha tea has been around for thousands of years, and has long been used by traditional cultures to improve digestion, boost immunity, eliminate kidney stones, reduce high blood pressure, and create sustained and lasting energy. Though there is still much debate over precisely where it originated, this unique, fermented tea -- kombucha tea is a simple combination of tea, sugar, water, and starter culture -- has no doubt been used safely and effectively by Asian, European, and now North American cultures alike for many centuries without issue (http://www.thedailybeast.com).

It is only since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and its cohort of likeminded allies in Western medicine became aware of kombucha's existence and popularity that it somehow became an untested and potentially dangerous concoction that the public should avoid. Though nobody has ever proven that kombucha is in any way dangerous, the mainstream media has published numerous scare stories over the years questioning kombucha's safety.

Single death linked to kombucha actually caused by underlying health conditions, pharmaceuticals

One myth you may have heard about kombucha tea is that it can kill you, a claim made by the FDA, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and others based on a single incident back in 1995 where a woman was admitted to the hospital with severe acidosis and elevated levels of lactic acid in her body, and later died. According to reports, she had been consuming kombucha every day for two months prior to her death.

But if you read the report in closer detail, it clearly states that no direct link was confirmed between kombucha tea and the woman's death. In fact, the report states that she had already been suffering from other underlying health conditions, and that she "took medications for hypertension, anemia, and mild renal insufficiency." An autopsy later showed that her actual cause of death appeared to be "peritonitis with fecal contamination of the peritoneal cavity" (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00039742.htm).

Since kombucha is an alkaline-forming food rather than an acid-forming food, it is illogical to blame kombucha for this woman's acidosis and resultant peritonitis. In actuality, it appears as though the woman's underlying health conditions combined with her medication regimen were the actual cause of her death, and that kombucha tea was merely a last-ditch effort to restore her already-declining health.

If anything, drinking kombucha may have been the only thing actually helping this woman, as the anti-microbial, alkaline-forming cultures present in the brew are known to counteract acidosis and actually restore peritoneal function. But rather than perform due diligence and research both the incident and the history of kombucha's safe use, the mainstream media took the bait and began propagating lies about kombucha.

Numerous studies show kombucha fights deadly pathogens, helps restore digestive function and strong immunity

On the other hand, numerous scientific studies have found that kombucha, which is both simple to brew and very inexpensive, fights off deadly pathogens, helps populate the gut with beneficial bacteria, boosts the immune system, protects vital organs from damage, and may even help slow the aging process. This, of course, is more than likely the real reason why the medical and drug industries are so vehemently opposed to people drinking kombucha -- this health-promoting and disease-preventing elixir can actually cure and prevent illness, which is a threat to the establishment.

A 2011 study published in the journal Pathophysiology, for instance, found that kombucha helps protect liver cells from damage (http://www.realnatural.org/2011/12/15/kombucha-protects-the-liver/). And a 2012 study published in the journal Swiss Society of Food Science and Technology found that kombucha has demonstrable "prophylactic and therapeutic properties," including antimicrobial, antibacterial, and anti-fungal effects (http://www.thedailybeast.com).

"Anti-microbial activity was observed in the fermented samples containing 33 g/L (grams per liter) total acid (7 g/L acetic acid) against the tested gram positive and gram negative organisms (Agrobacterium tumefaciens, Bacillus cereus, Salmonella cholerasuis serotype typhimurium, Staphylococcus aureus, and Escherichia coli)," wrote authors in a 2010 study out of Cornell University (http://happyherbalist.com/analysis_of_kt_cornell.htm).

"Kombucha may be a healthful beverage in view of its anti-microbial activity against a range of pathogenic bacteria. This may promote immunity and general well being."

So while health authorities continue to express worry about the "dangers" of kombucha, which scientifically do not exist, they have made it policy to turn a blind eye to the proven dangers of pharmaceuticals. FDA-approved drugs kill hundreds of thousands of people each year, and most of them have not even been definitively proven effective, and yet these so-called medical experts want you to stop drinking kombucha, a probiotic beverage with many proven health benefits.

Sources for this article include:

http://ca.shine.yahoo.com