Health Benefits of Tea

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 number 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 • Oolong Tea • Rooibos Tea • White 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 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.