Benefits of Tea
"It's great when something you love is also good for you - such as drinking tea! Over the years, there have been numerous reports about the benefits of tea.
The main one being that they're a good source of antioxidants - 'flavonoid antioxidants' to be exact. As well as tea, you can also find them naturally in foods such as fruit and vegetables.
Along with other antioxidants like vitamin C, vitamin A and chlorophyll, flavonoid antioxidants can help keep our body's cells and tissues healthy by mopping up 'free radicals' - atoms or molecules with unpaired electrons, hence 'free'. Although all living organisms make free radicals, they're also present in things like pollution. And while we all need free radicals, a build-up in our bodies can damage cells and DNA. So that's a big thumbs up for tea!" (link)
Top 10 Health Benefits
"1. Tea contains antioxidants. Like the Rust-Oleum paint that keeps your outdoor furniture from rusting, tea's antioxidants protect your body from the ravages of aging and the effects of pollution.
2. Tea has less caffeine than coffee. Coffee usually has two to three times the caffeine of tea (unless you're a fan of Morning Thunder, which combines caffeine with mate, an herb that acts like caffeine in our body). An eight-ounce cup of coffee contains around 135 mg caffeine; tea contains only 30 to 40 mg per cup. If drinking coffee gives you the jitters, causes indigestion or headaches or interferes with sleep -- switch to tea.
3. Tea may reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke. Unwanted blood clots formed from cholesterol and blood platelets cause heart attack and stroke. Drinking tea may help keep your arteries smooth and clog-free, the same way a drain keeps your bathroom pipes clear. A 5.6-year study from the Netherlands found a 70 percent lower risk of fatal heart attack in people who drank at least two to three cups of black tea daily compared to non-tea drinkers.
4. Tea protects your bones. It's not just the milk added to tea that builds strong bones. One study that compared tea drinkers with non-drinkers, found that people who drank tea for 10 or more years had the strongest bones, even after adjusting for age, body weight, exercise, smoking and other risk factors. The authors suggest that this may be the work of tea's many beneficial phytochemicals.
5. Tea gives you a sweet smile. One look at the grimy grin of Austin Powers and you may not think drinking tea is good for your teeth, but think again. It's the sugar added to it that's likely to blame for England's bad dental record. Tea itself actually contains fluoride and tannins that may keep plaque at bay. So add unsweetened tea drinking to your daily dental routine of brushing and flossing for healthier teeth and gums.
6. Tea bolsters your immune defenses. Drinking tea may help your body's immune system fight off infection. When 21 volunteers drank either five cups of tea or coffee each day for four weeks, researchers saw higher immune system activity in the blood of the tea drinkers.
7. Tea protects against cancer. Thank the polyphenols, the antioxidants found in tea, once again for their cancer-fighting effects. While the overall research is inconclusive, there are enough studies that show the potential protective effects of drinking tea to make adding tea to your list of daily beverages.
8. Tea helps keep you hydrated. Caffeinated beverages, including tea, used to be on the list of beverages thatdidn't contribute to our daily fluid needs. Since caffeine is a diuretic and makes us pee more, the thought was that caffeinated beverages couldn't contribute to our overall fluid requirement. However, recent research has shown that the caffeine really doesn't matter -- tea and other caffeinated beverages definitely contribute to our fluid needs. The only time the caffeine becomes a problem as far as fluid is concerned is when you drink more than five or six cups of a caffeinated beverage at one time.
9. Tea is calorie-free. Tea doesn't have any calories, unless you add sweetener or milk. Consuming even 250 fewer calories per day can result in losing one pound per week. If you're looking for a satisfying, calorie-free beverage, tea is a top choice.
10. Tea increases your metabolism. Lots of people complain about a slow metabolic rate and their inability to lose weight. Green tea has been shown to actually increase metabolic rate so that you can burn 70 to 80 additional calories by drinking just five cups of green tea per day. Over a year's time you could lose eight pounds just by drinking green tea. Of course, taking a 15-minute walk every day will also burn calories. Sign up for iVillage Special Offers" (link)
13 Reasons Tea Is (Healthy and) Awesome
"Tea can boost exercise endurance. Scientists have found that the catechins (antioxidants) in green tea extract increase the body’s ability to burn fat as fuel, which accounts for improved muscle endurance.
Drinking tea could help reduce the risk of heart attack. Tea might also help protect against cardiovascular and degenerative diseases.
The antioxidants in tea might help protect against a boatload of cancers, including breast, colon, colorectal, skin, lung, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, pancreas, liver, ovarian, prostate and oral cancers. But don’t rely solely on tea to keep a healthy body — tea is not a miracle cure, after all. While more studies than not suggest that tea has cancer-fighting benefits, the current research is mixed.
Tea helps fight free radicals. Tea is high in oxygen radical absorbance capacity (“ORAC” to its friends), which is a fancy way of saying that it helps destroy free radicals (which can damage DNA) in the body. While our bodies are designed to fight free radicals on their own, they’re not 100 percent effective — and since damage from these radical oxygen ninjas has been linked to cancer, heart disease and neurological degeneration, we’ll take all the help we can get.
Tea is hydrating to the body (even despite the caffeine!).
Drinking tea is linked with a lower risk of Parkinson’s disease. When considered with other factors like smoking, physical activity, age and body mass index, regular tea drinking was associated with a lowered risk of Parkinson’s disease in both men and women.
Tea might provide protection from ultraviolet rays. We know it’s important to limit exposure to UV rays, and we all know what it’s like to feel the burn. The good news is that green tea may act as a back-up sunscreen.
Tea could keep waist circumference in check. In one study, participants who regularly consumed hot tea had lower waist circumference and lower BMI than non-consuming participants. Scientists speculate that regular tea drinking lowers the risk of metabolic syndrome (which increases the risk of diabetes, artery disease and stroke), although it’s important to remember that correlation does not equal causation.
Regular tea drinking might also counteract some of the negative effects of smoking and might even lessen the risk of lung cancer (good news, obviously, but not a justification for cigs).
Tea could be beneficial to people with Type 2 diabetes. Studies suggest that compounds in green tea could help diabetics better process sugars.
Tea can help the body recover from radiation. One study found that tea helped protect against cellular degeneration upon exposure to radiation, while another found that tea can help skin bounce back postexposure.
Green tea has been found to improve bone mineral density and strength.
Tea might be an effective agent in the prevention and treatment of neurological diseases, especially degenerative diseases (think Alzheimer’s). While many factors influence brain health, polyphenols in green tea may help maintain the parts of the brain that regulate learning and memory." (link)
8 ways tea could benefit our bodies
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Tea & Health
"Tea drunk without milk contains no fat, starch or sugar - and it is completely free of calories. Using semi-skimmed milk adds 13 calories per cup, but also has the added benefit of valuable minerals like calcium. Four cups of tea with milk provides you with a fifth of your daily calcium requirement.The body absorbs warm drinks more quickly than cold drinks; therefore a cup of tea replaces lost body fluid more efficiently making it an excellent way to refresh your body after exercise." (link)
Tea 4 Health
"- How a cuppa can keep you kissing pretty
When you're puckering up for that kiss it's nice to know you've got a perfect set of pearlies and drinking tea can help contribute towards your teeth and a clean bill of health.
Tea is a great natural source of fluoride, which is added to water and toothpaste because it can actually strengthen tooth enamel. Tea can also help to cut down the build up of plaque on your pearly whites and apart from the fluoride in water, the tea plant is in itself a rich source of fluoride since it actually absorbs the compound from the soil via its roots.
Both black and green teas contain fluoride and they appear to help control bacterial growth that can result in dental plaque.
- Getting to the heart of the matter
Long stressful days at work, lack of exercise, too much convenience food that is high in fat and sugar but low in fibre, can all take its toll. A well-earned tea break is often the way to catch your breath, but it can also help maintain heart health as part of your healthy diet and lifestyle that includes plenty of exercise.
Studies from around the world are finding that the some of the ingredients in tea may help towards maintaining a healthy heart. A national study of 1,764 women in Saudi Arabia showed that tea drinkers were 19% less likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease than non-tea drinkers. In Holland, 806 men who consumed the greatest amount of catechins (a type of flavonoid) were 51% less likely to die of heart disease during the 10-year study period, compared with men who consumed the lowest amount.
Further studies are looking into how tea could help your heart. The results from trials so far show that flavonoids may prevent the oxidation of the so-called bad cholesterol in the blood that leads to the build up of plaque in artery walls, as well as helping to maintain a healthy cardiovascular system." (link)
On one of the websites that I looked at it had a comments section, and someone left this...
It made me laugh, and is also a very good point to make from an interesting angle. I'll keep this in mind.
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