Harmful Ingredients in Coffee and Tea?
Tea & Coffee – poison or medicine? The choice is yours
These are the common drinks of Indians and also of population all
over world. It is a common knowledge that drinking tea or coffee
as a habit is hazardous to health. Let us try to analyze the composition
of tealeaves and find out what each constituent does.
Tea leaf contains approximately 6% water, 2% caffeine, 17% albumin,
8% soluble substances, 8% toxic substances, 2% dectrine, 3% pectic
acid and pictine, 17% tannic acid, 4% chlorophyll and raisin, 26%
cellulose and 7% salt.
The toxic elements in tea secretly and gradually affect the body
parts, but permanently damage them. It makes the drinker addicted.
Tannin is used in tannery to make leather soft and shining. Tannin
blocks the orifices of tiny cells in the body, which absorbs nutrient
from eaten food. When tannin reaches stomach it disturbs the secretion
of juices for digestion of food. The consequence is indigestion,
constipation that affects liver. Since tannin’s effect is
to dry up watery contents in the body, the skin also becomes rough
and brittle. Its mental effect is similar to liquor or a narcotic
drug, which gives a kick for a shorter duration and thereafter,
gives rise to lethargy and listlessness. This makes one to gulp
another cup of tea to regain earlier euphoria. This leads to addiction
and usually these persons feel drowsy and morose if they do not
get their ‘cuppa’ to stimulate them.
Caffeine is like nicotine in tobacco and is a dreadful poison,
which causes gout and windy diseases. Excessive intake of tea or
coffee enhances the quantity of urine and the kidney is heavily
loaded. A person addicted to tea passes three times more urine than
a healthy person. But the toxic substance does not go out with urine
but gets solidified to form uric acid, which in turn gets deposited
in joints to cause gout and arthritis.
Tea also contains Thein, cynogen, stricknein, cyanide and aeromic
oil. Excessive intake of tea causes giddiness, sore throat, blood
impurity, insomnia, windy troubles and even paralysis.
Tea drinking is very bad for teeth. Besides disfiguring these,
it weakens the gum also.
Coffee or Kahawa is a powder made by roasting and grinding seeds
of a tree known as Coffee Arabica. It tastes like burnt cereal.
Both hot and cold coffee drinking is popular.
Medically, coffee is more dangerous a drink than tea. The caffeine
content in coffee is 50% more than tea. Like tea it has also tannin.
The combined effect of caffeine and tannin creates many neuro-genetic
disorders. According to ayurveda, coffee drinking makes the semen
very thin, which causes early ejaculation and involuntary night
discharge. It decreases reproducing power of both sexes. Coffee
drinking badly affects the skin, making it dark and rough.
So much for the ill effects of tea and coffee. Like any poison
used in very less quantity can be used as medicine, both tea and
coffee can be used sparingly, as a form of medicine.
Medicinal Uses of Tea:
1. To cure loose motions: Lemon tea with biscuits made of husk
in two to three doses.
2. To decrease Obesity: Honey tea first thing in the morning.
3. To cure fire burns: Covering the burnt part with a cloth soaked
in cold black tea [no milk, no sugar] and replacing and repeating
every half an hour.
4. To remove Phlegm in the body: Basil / black pepper / ginger tea
5. To cure windy troubles: After light lunch, take black tea [very
little sugar and milk, if a must for any individual to relish tea].
6. Tea as Skin-care Lotion: Apply strained tea leaves on face with
very little sugar added to it and leave it to dry. Then remove them
by massaging face. After 15 minutes just wash face with lukewarm
limewater. This is also effective treatment to remove wrinkles from
7. To cure Lethargy and Sleepiness: A cup of hot black tea.
8. Tea leaves as Mosquito Repellant: Dried up strained tea leaves
can be sprinkled on to coal furnace or ‘Angithi’.
9. Use of tealeaves in gardening: Add strained tealeaves / powder
to soil and it is very good manure. It is being practiced by me
with pronounced result for all kind of plants and especially very
good for flower plants.
10. Tea leaves solution as Beauty aid: Add a little of tealeaves
water to henna soaked in water to leave better marks on palm.
Use of Coffee as medicine:
1. Diarrhoea: A hot cup of coffee generates constipation due to
caffeine. Having light coffee twice or thrice a day will stop loose
2. Extreme Cold condition: Adding a few drop of brandy in a cup
of coffee cures all the congestion in the lungs. This combination
is especially good for persons suffering from pneumonia or bronchitis.
3. Coffee as energizer: When one is extremely tired and fails to
get sleep, a cup of hot coffee mixed with a spoon of honey will
energize the body to relax it.
Having pointed out the bad and good points of tea and coffee, it
is advised that no one should get addicted to these, as they cause
enormous harm compared to their usefulness. Between the two evils
drinking tea is better than coffee. Some say that tea drinking prevents
To leave tea or coffee drinking or to minimize the intake, one
is advised to drink water whenever one feels like drinking these
beverages. Resort to water therapy.
[For a complete detailed reading on Tea, Coffee please read Diamond
Pocket Books series authored by Dr. Satish Goel.]