For thousands of years in every culture around the globe, people have prepared and drank tea to soothe many common ailments, as well as to simply enjoy the taste. Laboratory studies have shown that certain tea can stop tumors from forming. It can prevent heart disease and stroke. Some kinds of tea can even help protect against cavities.
Tea contains hundreds of compounds called polyphenols. These compounds act as antioxidants. That is, they help neutralize harmful oxygen molecules in the body known as free radicals, which have been linked to cancer, heart disease, and a number of less serious problems, such as wrinkles and bloat.
“In general, polyphenols are very good antioxidants, But the best polyphenols are in tea, which contains a lot of them,” according to Joe A. Vinson, PHD, professor of analytical chemistry at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania.”They make up nearly 30% of tea’s dry weight.”
This may help to explain why tea is one of the most popular beverages in the world.
Tea has many, many benefits, including (but not limited to):
a. Protection of Arteries
The results of blocked arteries, like high blood pressure, heart attacks and stroke, don’t happen all at once. They are usually preceded by years of steadily increasing damage, in which dangerous low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol oxidizes and gradually makes arteries stiff and narrow.
Tea helps fight against this issue. Polyphenols in tea are extremely effective in preventing cholesterol from oxidizing blood vessels. In fact, one of the polyphenols in tea, epigallocatechin (EGCG), was able to neutralize five times as much LDL cholesterol as vitamin C, the strongest of the antioxidant vitamins.
The reason why the polyphenols in tea are so effective is because they “work in two places at once. They block the harmful effects of oxidized LDL cholesterol in the blood stream and at the artery walls, where LDL really produces atherosclerosis”, says Dr. Vinson.
In a Dutch study of 880 men, researchers found that those who ate the most flavonoids, a large phytochemical family that includes polyphenol in tea, had a 58% lower risk of dying from heart disease than those who ate less. When they analyzed the results further, it was revealed that the healthiest men were those who were getting more than half their flavonoids from black tea, with onions and apples contributing to the rest.
You don’t need to drink tons of tea to get the benefits. In the Dutch study the healthiest men drank about 4 cups of tea per day.
“Just as the tea protect arteries leading from the heart, it has a similar effect on arteries in or leading to the brain”, says Dr. Vinson.
A new Japanese study found that people who drank at least 5 cups of green tea daily had a whopping 62% lower risk of having a stroke from clotting arteries. According to experts, antioxidants in green tea help sticky cells that clump together to form clots, called platelets, to slide safely past each other. When there are no clots, there are no strokes!
b. Cancer protection
When you grill a hamburger, compounds called heterocyclic amines form on the surface of the food. These chemicals are transformed in the body into more dangerous forms, which can cause cancer, according to John Weisburger, MD, PhD,vice president for research and director of the Naylor Dana institute for Disease Prevention, in New York.
“Tea compounds called polyphenols help to prevent formation of potential carcinogens”, Dr. Weisburger says. In other words, they help stop cancer before it starts.
Cancer researcher Hasan Mukhtar, PhD, of the department of dermatology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, has seen tea stop cancer at each stage of its life cycle, arresting both its growth and spread. And where cancerous tumors have already formed, he has seen tea shrink them.
Dr. Mukhtar studied the effect of sunburn skin on laboratory animals and found that the animals given tea developed one-tenth as many tumors as those given water. Even when the tea-treated animals developed tumors, they were often benign (not cancerous). What’s more, tea was equally effective whether given as a drink or applied to the skin. Some cosmetics companies have started adding green tea to skin products for its potential protective benefits.
c. Dental protection
Tea can help prevent toothache and cavities, since it contains numerous compounds, polyphenols as well as tannins, that act as antibiotics. In other words, tea is great for mopping up the bacteria that promote tooth decay.
Tea also contains fluoride, which provide further dental protection. When researchers at Forsyth Dental Center in Boston tested a variety of foods for their antibacterial qualities, they found that tea was by far the most protective.
Japanese researchers at Kyushu University in Fukioka, Japan, have identified four components in tea – tannins, catechin, caffeine and tocopherol ( a vitamin E-like substance) – that help to increase the acid resistance of tooth enamel. This quartet of compounds was made even more effective with the addition of extra fluoride. The extra boost made tooth enamel 98% impervious to the action of acids on the teeth.
Types of helpful teas include: green tea, black tea, white tea, and red tea.
Which tea has the most healing polythenols? It doesn’t matter, as long as it is not herbal tea. (Tea which doesn’t contain leaves from Camellia sinensis.)
However; they are not identical. The lightest leaves, green and white, are minimally-processed and, in general, retain more disease-protective polyphenols and other antioxidants. But darker teas contain healthy theaflavins, which form when their polyphenols ferment and turn orange-red.
d. Weight loss
Red tea not only gets rid of hunger pangs, but it also promotes fat burning and boosts energy without relying on caffeine.
Red tea is basically the perfect health drink. It’s refreshing, tasty and can be served hot or iced. It helps clear toxins, reduces fat-storing hormones, and it promotes the production of fat-burning hormones… all while naturally reducing stress and balancing insulin.
I’m a naturopath, and I’ve spent years studying the benefits and side-effects of each of the 5 unique ingredients that go into red tea. It’s these ingredients, which can be found at the local supermarket, working together that makes red tea the ultimate metabolism-boosting, fat-busting, energy-revitalizing drink… and these ingredients are not found in green or black tea.
Red tea is caffeine free, vegan and vegetarian safe, dairy free, gluten free and sugar-free.
It’s a great alternative to caffeine — with absolutely no jitters, so “flushing fat away” is safe and rapid. Red tea also contains no fats or carbohydrates. The flavor is mild and slightly sweet.
One more thing about red tea: it has no oxalic acid, so there is no risk of kidney stones, unlike with black and green teas. It also has very low tannin levels, so it’s much better for you than green and black teas that have high tannin levels and can bind iron.
Another great thing about red tea is that it is packed full of powerful antioxidants that fight oxidative damage caused by toxins in your body. These antioxidants are scientifically proven to have an antibacterial, antiparasitic and antiviral action to boost your immunity.
Drinking red tea not only halts hunger, but can also reverse the harm caused by the built-up toxins in your fat cells, thanks to its powerful antioxidants.
Red tea could be the breakthrough that many people struggling to lose fat have been waiting for.
This delicious red tea requires no doctor’s visits, no lectures about losing weight, no expensive pills, no starvation dieting and no intense workouts…
Best of all — it helps eliminate harmful fat by working with your body’s natural fat-burning metabolism, without you feeling any cravings or hunger pangs at all!
Imagine enjoying the foods you love: steak, a beer, or even a dessert — completely guilt-free.
Imagine living a life free of expensive prescriptions and endless doctor’s visits to renew the pills.
And imagine feeling good and living your life without obsessing about every single calorie you eat…
… All while knowing your health is being protected by one of the most powerful natural healing red teas ever discovered.
That’s what’s possible with the new Red Tea Detox Program. Utilizing red tea along with several myth-busting diet rules, this program can help you lose up to 14 pounds in just weeks.
If you’d like to try the Red Tea Detox Program, enjoy $17 off for a limited time!
Get the most from your tea:
Steep for three minutes. It takes about three minutes for tea to release the health-promoting compounds. That’s also the time researchers use in their studies on tea. Longer steeping causes the tea to go bitter.
Choose your flavor. Although green tea has been more thoroughly researched than the black variety, both kinds show equally salutary effects, says DR. Vinson. If you prefer decaffeinated tea, that’s okay. The removal of caffeine has little effect on tea’s polyphenol content. The same holds for bottled teas, iced tea, and tea made from mixes. In fact, some soft drinks and juice companies have been so impressed with the benefits of tea that they have begun fortifying their beverages with green tea. Check out your health food store for new products.
Don’t use milk – at least for now. According to an Italian study, adding milk to tea, as the British do, blocked tea antioxidant benefits. “There is some evidence that milk protein binds to some of the tea compounds and blocks their absorption. But those compounds could get unbound in the stomach. So we’re not so sure milk is bad,” says Dr. Vinson.
Keep it fresh. If you make your own iced tea, drink it within a few days. “And make sure you cover it to keep it fresh when you refrigerate it,” he advises. When you keep iced tea for longer than a week, the concentration of compounds falls off. Many bottled and powdered iced teas remain spectacular antioxidant levels. In one prevention magazine analyses of antioxidants in various commercial iced teas, even the lowest-scoring convenience iced teas contained at least as many antioxidants as fruits and vegetables, such as strawberries and spinach! But highest honors went to home-made iced tea- cold-brewed refrigerator and classic hot-brewed tea that was than chilled came in even with each other for antioxidant levels. (One tip: shake cold-brewed tea before removing tea bags. It seems to knock more antioxidants into the liquid.)
Have tea with meat. Since the polyphenol compounds in tea help to block the formation of cancer-causing chemicals, it’s a good idea to have a cup of tea after eating fried or charred meat.
*Doctor’s tip: If you experience seasonal allergies, drink more green tea. It may be useful against a wide range of sneeze- starting allergens, including pollen, pet dander and dust. Go for two to three mugs a day.
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