While traditional Chinese medicine has long held that tea has many health benefits, modern research has begun to prove that many Chinese teas can be highly effective for boosting your immune system, aiding digestion and helping weight loss, among other benefits. While information on tea health benefits has previously been scattered and unreliable, this article will give you an overview of the full range of Chinese tea health benefits, and tell you which teas can best help you live a more healthy and happy life.
Tea for Digestion
Have you been noticing that coffee or carbonated energy drinks aggravate your stomach, giving you heartburn or indigestion? If so, tea can be a very useful replacement, giving you the caffeine you need to get your day started without the side effects. In fact, I can personally attest to this. As someone who suffers from acid reflux and a fairly severe caffeine addiction, I have drastically reduced my own discomfort and heart burn by cutting coffee out of my diet, and often drink over five cups of Chinese tea a day without any discomfort.
While black tea, green tea, pu-erh and herbal teas all claim to aid in digestion, the most important thing to look for is not the specific type of tea, but rather how it is produced. The main thing to look for is that the tea has been “post-fermented.” These teas typically start life as green teas or oolongs, but then go through a period of open-air aging which oxidates and ferments the tea, mellowing it out. Not only are these teas less harsh on the stomach, the enzymes and microflora which develop in the post-fermentation process can actually aid in digestion, making these teas ideal for drinking after a heavy meal.
The most common post-fermented tea is Pu-erh. When buying a puer for aiding digestion, make sure to buy a shou, or “ripened,” variety, as the sheng, or “raw,” variety has not gone through this process, and can actually be quite harsh on the stomach.
Tea for Weight Loss
There are currently many weight loss teas on the market, and you may have been wondering whether or not they are legitimate. While many of these products may exaggerate the weight loss benefits of tea, there have actually been a wide range of studies showing that Chinese tea, especially green tea, has a positive effect on metabolic rate and cholesterol levels.
If you want to buy a tea for weight loss, you don’t really need to spend extra money on proprietary blends. Most types of Chinese green tea–such as Pi Lo Chun, Mao Jian and Gunpowder Green–contain all of the compounds favorable to weight loss, and, when combined with exercise and a good diet, will expedite weight loss.
Tea for your Immune System
Chinese teas have a long history of being used to ward off disease and boost peoples’ immune systems. Recently, modern science has confirmed what people have suspected for thousands of years: most Chinese teas are beneficial to your immune system. This is because tea contains Theanine, an amino acid which has been shown to help immune response by increasing the disease-fighting capabilities of the body’s T Cells, a type of white blood cell. In fact, in a study comparing tea drinkers to coffee drinkers, the tea drinkers’ production of antibacterial proteins was found to be up to five times higher than that of the coffee drinkers’!
Almost all Chinese teas contain Theanine, but there are a few things to keep in mind. For starters, most herbal teas do not contain this compound, and their health benefits may vary. Both green tea and black tea contain Theanine, meaning that you can drink your favorite tea and do right by your body at the same time!
Clearly, switching from coffee to tea, or just expanding your tea-drinking horizons to encompass the dizzying variety of Chinese teas can be very beneficial to your health! In addition, Chinese tea has a number of other helpful compounds which researches are very optimistic about, which could assist in diabetes prevention, mood elevation and fighting bad breath. We will cover these other Chinese tea benefits, and recommend the best teas to realize them, in a later article.
