Chinese Tea Health Benefits

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.

Oolong Tea for Weight Loss

Oolong tea is known to have numerous health benefits. It is not only renowned for its taste but also for its ability to boost our overall health. But for people who like to keep in shape, one of the most positive effects of Oolong is the effect it has on the waist line. It can provide excellent support to a weight loss program, especially those involving cutting out carbohydrates from the diet.

While naturally prepared Oolong tea is practically free of calories and contains just fractional grams of carbohydrates per serving, studies suggest that regular consumption of Oolong tea will speed up your metabolism so that you will burn about 80 plus more calories per day than you otherwise would. Oolong tea can also help you lower your triglyceride levels and even stave off the onset of type II diabetes.
Oolong tea diet is best in combination with a carb controlled (not carb eliminating) diet and it also provides more long term and lasting positive health benefits on top of the immediate benefits of weight loss. With reducing your fat deposits permanently and giving you more energy, this Oolong tea carb-controlled diet is likely to lead to a reduced risk of heart disease and type II diabetes.
Oolong tea will also provide your body with antioxidants which can prevent or undo the damage done by free-radicals. Furthermore, by removing free radicals from your bloodstream, Oolong tea can boost your skin health, immune system operation, and metabolic rate.
Ofcourse, a big part of a healthy weight loss diet are exercise, enough sleep and healthy eating habits. If you include Oolong tea in your diet plan, it promises to bring faster and more visible results.

Wulong Tea: Does it Really Promote Weight Loss?

Have you heard the advertisements for a weight loss product called Wulong Slimming tea? It's being heavily marketed as the latest "quick fix" weight loss plan. Does this tea really help to promote weight loss or is it another clever marketing gimmick? The answer may lie somewhere in between.

While Wulong Slimming tea sounds may sound like a special product with proprietary ingredients that only the product originators have privy to, this tea is already widely available in most natural food markets and health food store under the name of oolong tea. Oolong tea comes from the Camellia senensis plant, just as do black and green teas. The difference lies in the amount of processing the three types of tea undergo.

Black tea is the most processed of the three teas since it's allowed to undergo a fermentation process that gives it a dark, rich flavor before being packaged. In the process many of the catechins that give tea its health benefits are removed. In contrast, green tea is steamed in order to stop the fermentation process and allowed to dry naturally. It retains most of the desirable, healthy catechins. Oolong tea lies somewhere in between in terms of processing. It's allowed to partially ferment, but not as much as black tea, so it retains some catechins.

Oolong tea began to receive real attention after a 2003 study conducted on eleven Japanese women showed that consumption of oolong tea increased resting energy expenditure. The study not only looked at the effect of oolong tea on metabolic rate, but also that of green tea. The study demonstrated that green tea increased energy expenditure by four percent while oolong tea increased it by around ten percent. While it was believed that the increase in metabolic rate was related to the polyphenols present in the teas, the green tea had more polyphenols than the oolong tea due to the fact that it was less processed. Why did oolong increase the metabolic rate of the women more? It was determined that the oolong tea contained more polymerized polyphenols than the green tea which probably accounted for the greater boost in metabolic rate.

According to this one very small study, it does appear that not only does oolong tea boost metabolic rate, it also raises it more than does green tea. Although this is encouraging, large trials haven't been conducted to verify these results. Still, there are lots of anecdotal reports that oolong tea helps to promote weight loss. Thus, Wulong tea probably does have some effect on metabolic rate.

Unfortunately, the amount of weight loss seen with Wulong or oolong tea is unlikely to be dramatic even if sipped throughout the day. Previous studies have shown that green tea increases metabolic weight when drank in large enough quantity, but the number of extra calories burned only amounts to around eighty calories in a day. With oolong tea, it should be higher but is still unlikely to be over 200 extra calories burned per day. Still, if sipped consistently over time along with a healthy diet and exercise program, it may be a useful weight loss adjuvant.

The bottom line? Wulong tea probably does up the metabolic rate at least slightly but the weight loss achieved with this product probably won't be dramatic unless combined with a sensible diet and weight loss program. It would also be more cost effective to buy oolong tea from your local health food store rather than invest in more costly Wulong tea.