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The Health Benefits of Tea
By: Jason (The Snob)
Tea: It Does the Body Good
Studies that support the health benefits of tea drinking keep filling the headlines. There’s simply no denying that a daily spot of tea does the body good.
Even though researchers can’t quite agree on every aspect, I’m sold on the fact that a few cups a day will do its best to protect me from heart disease, a stroke, cancer, and more.
What Makes Tea Good for the Body?
Tea contains high levels of antioxidants, some of which are called polyphenols, flavonoids, and catechins, and all of which take on the “free radicals” in the body and prevent them from harming the healthy cells on board.
In other words, sending in antioxidants is disease prevention in its finest form. Antioxidants are ready and waiting not only in teas but also in several fruits, vegetables, nuts, meats, and even wines (see my health benefits of wine article).
If that were not enough, tea also contains flouride which benefits your teeth and has bacteria killing properties which helps control bad breath and the formation of plaque.
Are All Teas Equally Good for the Body?
This is a question researchers are still squabbling over. Does green tea have more antioxidants than black tea? Should I drink instant tea or loose leaf tea for better health benefits? Is hot tea better than iced tea? And here’s what it comes down to:
• Higher quality teas may have more catechin antioxidants than lower quality teas.
• White tea has more antioxidants than any other tea.
• Green tea has more catechin antioxidants than black tea since black tea goes through more processing.
• Unfermented rooibos tea has more polyphenol antioxidants than fermented rooibos.
• Freshly brewed teas have more polyphenol antioxidants than instant or bottled teas.
• More researchers seem to agree that brewed (cold or hot) or caffeinated tea has more antioxidants than instant teas.
Here’s a short preview of the hundreds of recent studies that boast the health benefits of tea and its antioxidants:
Heart Benefits:
• Study finds tea drinkers have lower blood pressure (Archives of Internal Medicine, 2004).
• Tea may lower cholesterol and protect against heart disease (Journal of Nutrition, 2003).
• Black tea may lower “bad” cholesterol (United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center, 2003).
• Tea consumption may help heart disease patients (Circulation: The Journal of the American Heart Association, 2001).
Cancer Prevention:
• Green tea could help stem esophageal cancer. (Harvard Medical School, 2004).
• Green and black tea can slow down the spread of prostate cancer (Center for Human Nutrition at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, 2004).
• Tea may protect against cancer caused by smoking. (Journal of Nutrition, 2003).
• Green tea and white tea fight colon cancer (Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University study, Carcinogenesis, 2003).
• Hot tea may lower risk of some skin cancers (University of Arizona study, Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention (Vol. 9, No. 7), 2001).
• Green tea consumption may lower stomach cancer risk (University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Public Health study, International Journal of Cancer (Vol. 92: 600-604), 2001).
Hypertension-Reducing Benefits:
• Green and oolong teas reduce risk of hypertension (National Cheng Kung University study, Archives of Internal Medicine, 2004).
Immunity-Boosting Benefits
• Tea believed to boost the body’s defenses (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2003)
Leukemia-Fighting Benefits:
• A green tea component helps kill leukemia cells (Mayo Clinic, 2004).
Alzheimer’s-Fighting Benefits:
• Drinking tea might delay Alzheimer's Disease (Newcastle University's Medicinal Plant Research Centre study, Phytotherapy Research, 2004).
AIDS-Fighting Benefits:
• Tea may play a role as an AIDS fighter (University of Tokyo, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 2003).
In Conclusion:
So how do you get started in doing your body some good with tea?
To get the most health benefits out of your teas, choose high-quality loose leaf teas from your local or online tea shop. Brew it up and enjoy. And of course, don’t throw out the idea of enjoying instant or bottled teas when you’re on the go. You just might have to drink a little more.
Don’t wait any longer. Sip, savor, and fight disease today. It's never too late to enjoy the many health benefits of tea!
About the Author
Author of the 2BASNOB.com website about the enjoyment of coffee, tea, wine and beer.
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How to Benefit from the Mind-Body Connection
(excerpt)
You are about to gain insight into the
mind-body connection. The number of
people who truly understand these principles on our
planet are relatively few.
There is an undeniable connection between our minds and
bodies, you can learn to use this fact to your benefit.
Dr. Bernie Siegel, author of "Love, Medicine and
Miracles" was once a distraught cancer surgeon until he
began to understand the greater principles of the mind-
body connection. He felt dragged down by the artificial
barriers that existed between patient and doctor, and the
helplessness he often felt as a result of his inability
to effectively serve those patients. Eventually, those
barriers were disintegrated by Dr. Siegel's recognition
and growing understanding of the mind-body connection and
how it could serve his patients and himself.
Dr. Siegel, or Bernie as he began to have his patients
refer to him, had some
startling realizations as a cancer surgeon. He found that
there were actually
quite a few people in the world that successfully beat
the statistics on cancer
survival. He began to recognize that a patient's ability
to defeat something as
serious as cancer had to do with the patient's mind and
attitude about their
disease.
If you would like to see the rest of
this article, please go here:
http://www.tobeinformed.com/repository/mind-body.html
copyright 2004 - David Snape
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