Tea Benefits - "Who says tea is not good?"

Tea is known as nature’s ‘wonder drug’. Of late, tea and its healthy benefits have been receiving wide attention in the media. The ability of tea to promote good health has long been believed in many countries, especially Japan, China, India, and even England.

The buzz about tea and its benefits is getting louder and is simply becoming too difficult to ignore. Enlightened tea drinkers are rediscovering the protective and revitalizing benefits of this ancient drink. Ever wonder why the Chinese and Japanese have some of the longest life-expectancy rates in the world. Shhh…here’s the secret: they drink tea a lot.

Who knows, what you read here may eventually save you and your family’s life.

First of all, you need to answer these very simple questions:

Are you concerned that your kids might join the burgeoning ranks of obese children due to the unhealthy effects of their everyday consumption of tasty treats like burgers, hotdogs, pizza, chips and candies?

Are you concerned about the lurking threat of heart attacks and strokes that might hit you, your spouse or your parents anytime due to the adverse effects of fat-filled diet, smoking, and drinking?

Are you concerned that the stress of everyday life and exposure to harmful elements in the environment could wear your family’s defenses down and expose them to the threat of cancer?

Tea: Health Benefits and Wonders
Tea is the second most widely consumed beverage in the world, exceeded only by the most necessary of all liquids - water. Tea is an integral part of everyday societal life in many of the world’s most populous countries. This has made tea the most popular beverage for a huge swath of the world’s people.

Tea is prepared from linder leaves, leaf buds and tender stalks of different varieties of the warm-weather evergreen known as camellia sinensis. The most popular types of tea are:

Green Tea
Black Tea

Other teas are:

Ginseng Tea
Herbal Tea
Rooibos Tea

The degree of processing the leaves of camellia sinensis determines whether a tea will be green, black or red (oolong). Green tea is the least processed. These are simply steamed quickly before packaging. Black and red tea are partially dried, crushed and fermented. The length of fermentation, which causes the leaves to blacken, determines whether the tea will be red or black.


Recent research shows that any tea derived from camellia sinensis has cancer-fighting properties. The leaves of this plant contain chemicals called polyphenols, which give tea its antioxidant properties.

Polyphenols in tea have been known to:

Help protect cells from the normal, but damaging, physiological process known as "oxidative stress." Although oxygen is vital to life, it's also incorporated into reactive substances called free radicals. These can damage the cells in our body and have been implicated in the slow chain reaction of damage leading to heart disease and cancer.

Help prevent blood clotting
Help lower cholesterol levels
Help neutralize enzymes that aid in the growth of tumors
Help deactivate cancer promoters
Help stimulate the immune system

Tea also has fluoride for strong teeth, virtually no calories, and half the amount of caffeine found in an equally-sized cup of coffee. Whether decaffeinated tea has the same level of polyphenols, and thus the same health benefits, as regular tea has not yet been studied. Caffeine is a natural component of tea leaves. It is not yet known if removing caffeine also removes polyphenols.

Apart from polyphenols, tea also contains a variety of ingredients that are beneficial to one's health. These include theanine (an amino acid unique to tea), vitamins, minerals, and methylxanthines. These are the components that are the source of the healthful properties of tea. These are known to:

Help fight against mutagenic agents
Delay aging
Help fight high blood pressure
Help fight against viral and bacterial infection
Help improve the functions of the digestive and excretory systems

To sum it up - by drinking 2-4 cups a day of tea, you can reap in the numerous curative and preventive tea benefits.

SOURCE: TeaBenefits.com (http://www.teabenefits.com/)