Hello, if you suffer from high blood pressure or anxiety or both, well, there's one Herbal Tea that you really need to avoid
That's what's coming up. Next. You stay tuned. I'll see you in a tick
Now for today's 20/20 idea to better health
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You know when everything is going well for you. Life is good.
but for some reason, you know
You're doing everything right? But for some reason you discover that your blood pressure is a little bit out of whack and you wondering
What is going on. This story I'm about to tell you is about a specific herbal tea
That I introduced into my lifestyle
Earlier this year. It's a funny story. What's this tea I'm talking about. It's
Matcha tea, okay. Matcha tea. This is a tea in question and it's got nothing to do with this brand by the way
It's all about matcha tea in general. Matcha tea has been receiving a lot of attention on the Internet lately
I sort of felt I was missing out, you know fear of missing out because I love teas as you probably know
I love lots and lots of teas and
Matcha tea turned out to be one of those teas that I had not introduced into my life
And I thought I should get it
So I went and I got a good number of cans of this matcha tea
I got this. I was using it for about three weeks non-stop every day. During those 3 weeks
I discovered that my blood pressure
was
the top value was in the 150s and the lower value was in the 90s and
I
Was wondering what on earth was going on because my blood pressure is usually pretty good
So I had to do a self audit of what I had introduced into my life at that point in time
It turned out that when I did the self-audit, it turned out that this tea, this herabl tea, this matcha tea
Was what I had introduced into my life and
to all intents and purposes
That was the reason why my blood pressure was out of whack and then I stopped using it
And of course my blood pressure went back to normal. Why did that happen?
well, I'm going to give you an explanation as to how and why that happened and
You know because I had to do some digging to actually find out why this was the reason why my blood pressure was up
So let me give you the background as to why
Matcha tea is not good for your high blood pressure, and it's also not good for anxiety
this story starts from the plant from which the matcha tea is actually made from
matcha tea is made from a plant called camellia sinensis and it is the same plant from which
black tea, green tea and oolong tea actually made from. But there's a difference between matcha tea and the rest i.e
green tea, black tea and oolong tea. With matcha tea
the leaves of the camellia sinensis plant
are actually just dried up and then they are
Pulverized into a very fine powder and that is what you have here as Matcha tea. With the others
Green tea black tea and oolong tea, there's some processing involved
In fact with black tea, the tea leaves actually oxidized before you end up with the black tea
But with matcha tea, it's just the pure green leaves of the camellia sinensis
That's what you get. What that means is that you're actually getting everything good about the camellia sinensis plant
Leaves as well as everything bad about it and therein lies the problem
So, what's good about the camellias sinensis plant and matcha tea as well as the green tea, black tea and the oolong tea is
That the camellia sinensis plant leaves actually has high levels of
epigalloCatechin-3-Gallate, which is the antioxidant and that's reason I bought the tea in the first place because it's got high
Antioxidant level. So, with the matcha tea because it's coming from the pure leaves and you consuming the entire leaf
I felt I'm gonna get a higher content of the antioxidants
But just like you've got that; you also got two other compounds that are in direct competition with each other. By that
I mean a
Non-essential amino acid called L-theanine. The L-theanine has a calming influence on the body, which is good
but alongside that you also have
caffeine in the matcha tea
Which is a stimulant. So, you have the Theanine which has a calming influence on the body
As well as Caffeine, which has a stimulating effect on the body
so you've got these two things competing against each other. Whether you become calm and focused or
You become excitable, anxious, fretful or even having problems initiating sleep
depends on the ratio of the Caffeine to the Theanine you have any tea in your hands because
The matcha tea, green tea, the black tea and oolong tea, they all have varying levels of caffeine and theanine in them
Like I said before the green tea, black tea and oolong tea; they're processed tea
So they have a lower caffeine to theanine ratio in them
in fact
the black tea has a ratio of 2 caffeine to 1 theanine
The green tea has a ratio of 1.5 caffeine to 1 Theanine. In the matcha tea the ratio is 2.5
caffeine to
1 Theanine. And that is why the matcha tea is not a very good tea for you if you've got high blood pressure or
you've got anxiety or both. Never mind what the retailers of the matcha tea will tell you because when you go to their website
they're going to emphasize the calming influence of the theanine and they tend to de-emphasize the fact that
The matcha tea actually has a high caffeine content. I can tell you from personal experience that the caffeine content of the matcha tea
It's not ideal for somebody who's got high blood pressure or anxiety because it's gonna make both conditions worse. In case you have forgotten
caffeine actually has a stimulating effect on the
Sympathetic nervous system. It revs up the sympathetic nervous system and that's why it's not good for Anxiety and that's why it's also not
good for someone who's got high blood pressure because for both conditions
You want the parasympathetic nervous system to dominate the sympathetic and in this case the sympathetic wins.
And if you remember when I did a video on the herbal teas for high blood pressure
I did include green tea as one of the teas you can use to control your high blood pressure
However, I specifically said in that video that if you're going to use green tea for high blood pressure
You have to go for the decaffeinated variety and the reason is because the caffeine effect of the green tea
overrides the theanine effect and because of that the decaffeinated variety what you must use. The same underlying principle applies to
the matcha tea. The dominance of the caffeine is
unquestionable. So, as far as this video is concerned
If you're going to use any tea that arises from the camellia sinensis plant; go for the green tea but use the decaffeinated
Variety, but you must avoid the matcha tea because the matcha tea will exacerbate your high blood pressure
It will make your anxiety worse and it's worse when you've got both conditions
Anyway, I hope you got some value from this video as usual
Give it a 'Thumbs up' if you learned something and if you got any comments
Leave your comments below. Share this video with anybody whom you think would benefit from it. That's it. Until next time, well, this is
Dr. Joe signing out