A man who was drinking a gallon of ice tea on daily basis suffered a kidney failure. The Arkansas man, 56, admitted to doctors that he was used to consume 16 cups of iced black tea each day. Doctors figured out that excessive consumption of iced tea caused kidney failure for the patient. He complained of extreme fatigue and pain.

Doctors determined that his kidney was clogged with the food chemical called oxalate, which is present in iced tea. Iced tea was the best possible explanation for his kidney failure, said Dr. Umbar Ghaffar of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock.

The case has been described in The New England Journal of Medicine by Ghaffar and two other doctors.

The man went to the doctors in May with nausea, weakness, fatigue and body aches. The patient has to remain on dialysis for rest of his life or go for a kidney transplant.

“In this case there were oxalate crystals inside the kidney, and that generates an inflammatory reaction. If that’s not resolved it will cause scarring and loss of the kidney tissue. So that’s what probably was happening in this patient”, said Ghaffar.