According to a quick google search, tea is the most consumed beverage in the world besides water.
Here in Canada, that’s hard to imagine that because everywhere you look, people are drinking coffee. But don’t let this discourage you from being a tea lover as there are many benefits of drinking tea and it’s our mission to make it as cool as coffee if not cooler.
Tea has been around for a long time. In the East, it’s been used as medicine and remedies for hundreds of years. But as modern Western consumers, we’re not going to just go with what the ancient peoples believed. We need some evidence-based super scientific proof to convince us that it’s worth paying attention to. Luckily, there have been many modern studies that show that yeah, tea is good for you.
Tea is so good, in fact, that some of these evidence-based super scientific studies show that drinking tea on a regular basis could actually reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, and some cancers. No joke, links to the real articles are at the end of this blog post if you’re interested in the more boring and serious version of this information.
But if you’d like to be enlightened by our version of this information then read on.
What is Tea?
When talking about “tea” in this article, we are specifically referring to tea leaves that came from the Camellia Sinensis plant. That is – green tea, black tea, oolong tea, white tea, and pu-erh teas.
Though fruit and herbal teas have their own health benefits, these types of teas are not part of this narrative.
The Health Benefits of Tea
What are antioxidants?
Antioxidants are compounds that maintanace the free radicals in our body. Imagine free radicals like garbage on the streets and antioxidants are the wonderful people that go around and pick up that garbage to keep our streets and walkways clean and free from infestation and disease.
Free radicals are highly reactive and unstable molecules that are by-products or “garbage” of various chemical reactions that happen during metabolism. When free radicals are left unchecked, they can cause a lot of damage to the body’s cells and lead to oxidative stress.
“Prolonged Oxidative stress on your body is like if all the garbage on the streets was left as is, and there was no one to clean it up. Imagine how our cities would look, feel, and smell if garbage was everywhere rotting and decaying.”
Oxidative stress on your body is like if all the garbage on the streets was left as is, and there was no one to clean it up. Imagine how our cities would look, feel, and smell if garbage was everywhere rotting and decaying. That’s oxidative stress. Prolonged oxidative stress on your body can increase your risk of cardiovascular disease and certain types of cancers. And if you envision a world with no waste management and piles on piles of garbage everywhere, you can appreciate that it’s not going to be good for mankind. Same goes for the accumulation of free radicals in our body.
Free radicals are not all that bad though, our immune cells (the body’s very own soldiers and border patrol) use free radicals to shoot the bad guys during foreign invasions and such. So, there’s a time and place for both free radicals and antioxidants, but the key is balance.
Since garbage and waste are inevitable, we need to have agents in place to keep the accumulation of garbage under control. If the people are cleaning up the garbage as fast as the garbage is being produced than things should be okay. Reduce, reuse, recycle people – very important to keep the world a beautiful and live-able place for humans as antioxidants keep our bodies a beautiful and live-able place for our cells.
Okay, so what does this have to do with tea?
The Camellia Sinensis plant contains antioxidants. And the Backstreet Boys of antioxidants are flavonoids, specifically EGCG. Studies have shown that EGCG is very effective way to Mortal Combat the free radicals in our bodies.
And if you forgot already, too many free radicals in the body can cause cell damage which can lead to cancer, heart disease, and clogged arteries if left unchecked. The antioxidant EGCG has been shown to be effective in keeping free radicals in our bodies under control, just as the Backstreet Boys have been shown to be effective in making our hearts melt every time they drop a tune.
Other foods that have antioxidants include coffee, dark chocolate, fruits, and vegetables. This is not all about tea, you can get beneficial antioxidants from having a well balanced diet. But the Backstreet Boys of antioxidants, EGCG – that’s mostly going to be from tea leaves, and highest in green teas.
On the contrary, some things that can cause excessive free radicals that lead to oxidative stress are cigarette smoke, excessive alcohol intake, uncontrolled high blood sugar, radiation like sun-tanning but can be other things too like X-rays, and poor intake of antioxidant-containing foods.
2) Helps with Focus
The worse part of being a Millennial/Gen Z-er is our attention span right? Say no more! Tea contains caffeine AND the amino acid called L-theanine. This combination of compounds have shown to improve alertness and focus in a more calm and collected way throughout the day when compared to it’s jock friend coffee.
The worse part of being a Millennial/Gen Z-er is our attention span right?
Tea typically has less caffeine than coffee. However, the amino acid L-theanine acts on the brain in a different way than caffeine to induce relaxation as well as focus. And tea still has a small jolt of caffeine to help to heighten mental alertness, especially black teas. This combination creates a consistent and gradual boost of energy that comes slowly and then gradually leaves so you don’t get that a sudden mid-afternoon crash that you might experience with coffee or other highly caffeinated beverages.
Less caffeine also means less jitters, less anxiety, less racing thoughts, more calm focus, you get the idea. Now you have the knowledge, choose your potion.
3) Cardiovascular Health
There has been some evidence-based super scientific research done on the benefits of drinking tea and heart health.
How? Regular tea consumption may help reduce many risk factors that lead to heart disease such as high blood pressure, obesity, and controlling bad fats in your body that could lead to high cholesterol and elevated triglyceride levels.
The significance of improving heart health is mostly attributed to the reduction of the bad fats in the body. Bad fats in your blood can clog your arteries and reduce the blood flow and oxygen to important organs which includes your heart.
Some studies have suggested that drinking tea on a regular basis helps reduce the bad fats in your blood. Other studies have shown that tea consumption helps to regulate blood sugar levels (as long as you don’t add sugar to your tea of course) so that your blood isn’t like molasses and gives your heart a break from having to pump so hard. Treat your heart like your buddy, not your slave.
4) May Prevent Stroke
Tea may help to reduce the risk of strokes for the same points that we just talked about in the heart health section and for the sake of your attention span, the information will not be repeated, read the above if you want to.
Strokes can happen 1 of 2 ways: 1) bad fats clump together over time and clog blood vessels in your brain 2) high blood pressure can cause ruptures and bleeds in your brain. Being conscious of what you consume to actively reduce the amount of bad fats (i.e. cholesterol or triglycerides) in your blood and keeping your blood pressure in check can significantly reduce your stroke risk.
In Chinese culture and many asian cultures, it’s a normal thing to drink tea after every meal. Could that be helping our bodies counteract these bad fats? Perhaps.
5) May prevent some cancers
Many studies have been done on tea and the possible prevention of some cancers. When we say many studies, we mean just a smidge over 1000.
A meta-analysis on this topic suggested that the antioxidants found in tea may reduce the risk of some cancers in humans. If you didn’t know, a meta-analysis is when experts that get together and read over lots of articles on studies done on a particular topic and then try and find out what’s similar and what’s different. Then they try to come up with answers to questions that they have, which in this case is – does drinking tea prevent cancer?
So, when they did this meta-analysis they found that there was, “an inverse relationship between tea and some cancers”, which basically means they concluded from the studies that people who drank tea more regularly were less likely to get diagnosed with a particular cancer by the end of the study (they looked at different cancers individually rather than cancer as a whole).
Of all the teas, it was particularly green tea consumption that was shown to significantly reduce the risk of some cancers.
6) Stress Management & Healthier Lifestyle
Now that you’ve read through the entire article, it’s important to know that tea is not an end all be all solution to keeping your body healthy for as long as possible. Tea could be 1 of the many things you should incorporate in your life while working toward having a healthier lifestyle.
“Managing your stress, a healthy balanced diet, exercising, and seeking continual growth in different areas of your life are important to overall wellness and reducing the risk of disease.”
Managing your stress, a healthy balanced diet, exercising, and seeking continual growth in different areas of your life are important to overall wellness and reducing the risk of disease.
An article from Harvard University actually made a point that it could just be that people who drink tea might just live a healthier lifestyle in general.
It’s hard to say for sure that the habit of drinking tea alone everyday could significantly reduce the risk of disease. It’s possible that a person who drinks tea regularly just happens to eat healthier, exercise, minimize stress, and possess other such health qualities that may have contributed to the reduced risk of disease shown in those studies.
But all in all, tea is not bad for you and in many cases it’s good for you. So grab your favourite mug, brew yourself some tea, and do whatever you feel like doing today. As always, embrace simplicity, take time for yourself, and create beautiful moments.