The health benefit of tea is always a popular topic. While we always encourage our customers and readers to drink tea for the experience, we have to admit that the health benefit of tea is probably what attracted people to the world of tea in the first place. There are quite a lot information that already covers the health benefit of tea. However, most of information simply mentions and lists all nutrition contents in tea leaves. To truly understand and appreciate the health benefit of tea, we must understand how a sip of tea travels in our body, as well as how our organs deal with all contents carried in tea. Today, let’s talk about the journey of tea in our body.
In general, three words conclude the health benefit of tea: clean, dissolve and eliminate. Our body is like a house. After a while, there would be dusts and trashes accumulated. Tea is like a effective broom. It helps us clean the trash and the toxin in our body.
To help you better understand our topic, I’d like to invite you to visualize a sip of tea as a tour group. In our tour group, we have high-concentration tea polyphenols, caffeine, theanine, alkaloids, multiple fragrances, tea polysaccharide, tea saponin and vitamins. In this tour, our tour group will enter our body through esophagus into the stomach and small intestine, then into intestinal capillaries, and finally into our liver.
Even though tea is a liquid that enters into our mouth, it’s actually the fragrances that first reach our body. This is why a premium tea should produce aromas instantly. In Wuyi oolong, we value “rock essence and floral aroma” (see our previous blog here). The smell of a tea is equally important.
Once we take a sip, tea polyphenols start to work its magic. Approximately just 1 minute after, tea polyphenols start to eliminate toxins in our mouth and throat. This is why drinking tea can relieve oral ulcer and sore throat. After 10 minutes, tea polyphenols begin to help intestinal peristalsis. This is where tea helps digestion. 30 minutes later, tea polyphenols finally reach our blood. 1 hour after drinking tea, tea polyphenols start to protect our veins, cells and brain from free-radicals. When people say tea can prevent CVD (cardiovascular diseases) and strokes, they’re referring to tea polyphenols in this stage. Finally, after 6 hours to 48 hours, tea polyphenols accomplish its mission and are eliminated from our body.
Caffeine is also a major member of our tour group. Slightly different from that of coffee, caffeine in tea travel slower. About 45 minutes after drinking tea, caffeine finally leaves our stomach and small intestines. Traveling with blood, caffeine is delivered to our body. Caffeine strengthens our heart and helps relieve asthma and muscle spasm. Caffeine in tea also increase the blood flow in our kidney and prevents urinary infection. If we have alcohol in our blood, caffeine can also drive alcohol away. After 4 hours, caffeine starts to slowly “burn” the extra fat in our body. This is why there’re analysis showing that tea can actually help in weight loss. Finally, 8 hours after, caffeine exits our body.
Finally, we’d like to talk about theanine. Theanine is usually overlooked by tea lovers because it acts rather slowly. Theanine can influence the metabolism and the release of neurotransmitters such as dopamine. It helps calm us down and protect our brain from excessive cerebral activities. But why do people often ignore theanine? Because theanine doesn’t work until about 5 hours after we drink tea. This is perhaps why most online posts mention that tea is calming but without revealing what exactly helps.
At the end of this tea blog, we’d like to address again that the health benefit of tea doesn’t just come from drinking tea only. It won’t help us if we don’t acquire a better and healthier lifestyle. This is why we always recommend enjoy the full tea experience. Tea is most calming and healing when you immerse yourself in it.
We hope you enjoyed today’s blog. As always, if you have questions or suggestions, please leave a comment, tweet us @valleybrooktea or email the author directly at zhang@valleybrooktea.com. Please also follow us on Instagram @valleybrooktea and join our mail list to get our daily tea updates and our latest promotions!