The Endless Benefits of Tea

Warm The Soul and Delight The Senses

A hot cup of tea warms the soul, delights the senses, and is packed with health benefits to boot. (photo by Alena Ozerova)

In the deep of winter and with the beginning of a new year, drinking more tea is always a part of my “self-improvement plan”. Tea provides energy throughout the day, reawakening our senses and giving our minds an unrefined, casual attentiveness without the overly busy feeling that consuming too much coffee and other energy drinks provide.

Tea is loaded with antioxidants giving it great press as a disease preventative. Tea has long been associated with weight loss and appetite satiety making it a must do ingredient for the greater population of the United States as a means to maintain a healthy weight. Tea is also depicted as the most prevalent drink worldwide (about 2.5 million tons of tea are dried each year) and it has been historically enjoyed for over 5000 years.

The word tea is familiar to all of us and generally encompasses the loose leaves of the Camellia sinensis along with the dried herbs and flowers that provide different healing properties. However, how we commonly define tea is not the same as what is truly included in the tea family which is exclusively the white, green, black and oolong tea that all come from the plant called Camellia sinensis.

Their variation in color and flavor are due to different levels of oxidation, white being the least and black being the most. Tea is currently being praised for its innumerable health benefits; white and green teas have higher levels of polyphenols (antioxidants) enjoyed for the disease fighting properties and reducing cholesterol while black teas are more effective in preventing heart disease and high blood pressure.

There are three ingredients found in tea that make it such a surreptitious disease fighting, fat burning drink.

A varied sampling of green, white, and black loose leaf teas. (photo by Marek Uliasz)

The first of the three is caffeine.

While caffeine is found in several natural plants and unnaturally found in several over the counter diet pills, caffeine is a stimulant that boosts the body’s thermogenesis or the burning of calories and fat molecules.

The second ingredient is L-Theanine.

Moments after the caffeine has entered your system, the L-theanine is released into the blood system and into the brain where it produces a state of relaxed and effortless alertness. This allows for your body to respond to caffeine in a positive way without having to suffer from the negative side effects, like the jitters, or a caffeine crash. With your body being under less stress you will have less of the hormone cortisol being released (cortisol, the stress hormone, causes an increase in appetite and can cause fat to be stored in the abdomen).

The third ingredient is EGCG (Epigallocatechin-3-gallate).

EGCG is basically a super mega antioxidant that suppresses tumor production and inhibits the growth of cancer cells in everything from breast, colorectal and esophageal tissue to skin tissue alike. It is an extraordinary anti-inflammatory which aids in the prevention of these diseases and the spread of disease and sickness within the body. EGCG is becoming well known for burning fat, clearing cholesterol from your arteries (which results in more oxygen in your blood and more overall energy), and can enhance the efficiency of insulin.

In a nation where obesity and heart disease are on the rise, and where everyday there is a new fad diet making ‘being healthy’ seem confusing, I think we can at least agree on drinking tea. While tea is a large part of our culture and of our history, it is also a large part of who we are today. Tea has endless benefits so drink up!

Choosing a special mug to enjoy your warming elixir is part of the fun! (photo by Candace Prill)

Making Tea:

The most cheap and easy way to drink tea is to buy it in bulk and to use a reusable tea ball. Fill your tea ball no more than half way to allow the full flavors and benefits of the tea to expand. Choose any variety of white, green, black or oolong but do not confuse tea with ‘herbal teas’ like peppermint and chamomile, which do not hold the same health benefits as real tea from the Camellia sinensis.

Fill your mug with hot water and allow the tea ball to steep to your desired strength. If you want to drink tea in the evening, without the caffeine, steep twice and dump out the first.

Ukra, Mark, (2009). The Ultimate Tea Diet. New York, NY: HarperCollins Pubishers.

Hoffman, Donald. (2014) EGCG: Potent extract of Green Tea. Retrieved from www.drhoffman.com

by Candace Prill

Being raised in a small Michigan town has taught me many things; being one with nature, eating whole foods and living in a sustainable way are just a few. My family and I currently reside in Marquette, where we can grow a garden downtown, bike anywhere in the city and enjoy endless nature just outside of the city limits. In the past several years I have been lucky to be a part of researching, writing and teaching about whole living. You can find my monthly nutrition column “Healthier Living” in the Great Lakes Pilot that I have been writing for the past two years. You can also find my published geological research in “Agates: Inside Out” by Karen Brzys. My passion is to live and, teach to live, in a sustainable way, both nutritionally and environmentally. I look forward to sharing my articles on sustainable living here at Marquette Magazine.

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