[Music]
Heather: Hey guys!
This is Heather from healthyeatingstartshere.com.
Okay, I got all my teas out because I wanted to talk about a question that I’ve gotten
from a bunch of you; is tea healthy.
And I gave you my quick answer which is yes, but I wanted to elaborate a little bit and
get into the different types of tea and how they compare, how they compare to other things
as well like coffee.
So the main thing that people think about tea and whether it’s healthy or not is caffeine
and what level of caffeine it has.
So caffeine does have some downsides; it is a stimulant and it artificially stimulates
your body which is not usually a good thing.
It has been shown to be helpful before exercise, in small doses; you don’t need a ton of
it but it helps for performance and certain people who are looking for really high level
of performance in their exercise or athletics.
But it’s also shown to be a diuretic which means it flushes water out of your system.
Now Michael Greger had a really awesome article on Care2 very recently.
So I’ll post a link to that and basically what he showed was that tea when compared
to water had about the same diuretic effect.
I mean they excreted the same amount of urine, no matter which way.
So it’s mostly the water that was producing the diuretic effect for that.
In any case, when you have it in small doses like over a day, if you drink a few cups of
tea then the effects are minimal on the diuretic because you are also getting water in with
the tea.
Okay, so pluses and minuses to caffeine, but the main thing is that tea has a really level
of antioxidants.
So getting those outweighs the effects of the caffeine, as long as you are not having
a crazy amount and as long as you mostly drink green or herbal teas and black tea sometimes.
Okay, so that brings me to the level of caffeine in different types of tea.
So black tea has the most caffeine and Earl Grey is the type of black tea.
So those of you who drink Earl Grey, just be aware it does have the highest tea level
of caffeine but it has about half the level of coffee.
I read something that said that by weight, dry tea has more caffeine than dry coffee
beans but when they get infused into the water, coffee imparts more caffeine to the water
than tea does.
So again, black tea has about half the amount of caffeine as coffee.
And you can get black tea in the bags or you can get it loose, which is kind of fun; you
can put it in a little metal ball and infuse it into your teapot.
You can also get black tea that is decaffeinated so that’s another option, although I don’t
know about the process for decaffeinating tea.
Sometimes they use chemicals and that’s not that great.
I probably take the caffeine over the chemicals depending on the process.
Okay and then green tea, you can also get in bags or you can get loose.
Green tea has about half of the caffeine of black tea.
So about a quarter of the caffeine of coffee and it is green, but it’s kind of a dark
green because it’s dried.
And another big difference between green tea and black tea is that they come from the same
plant, the tea plant.
But green tea is not oxidized as much as black tea.
So the green tea has more antioxidants left in it.
So more benefits in green tea, plus less caffeine.
So that’s usually my choice; that or an herbal tea which has no caffeine.
It’s made from different plants.
So it can be made from pretty much anything.
This one is rose hips and some type of dried fruit, I actually forgot, but it smells really
good.
So it has no caffeine because it’s not made from the tea plant.
And usually those are mixed; there are other kinds of herbal teas, like Rooibos is one
of my favorites.
This one is Rooibos mixed with some calendula flowers and orange peel and some other nice
flavors, but you can get it straight and it’s just a red thing.
It’s a South African tea, no caffeine and also tons of antioxidants in Rooibos tea and
Honeybush is another one.
This is a Honeybush, Honeybush looks like green tea, it’s fairly similar, it’s green.
And this is green tea mixed with cinnamon, cloves, pepper, and cardamom to make like
a chai which is so tasty.
So those are benefits to tea overall is the antioxidants that they provide but there are
also specific teas that you can use for specific purposes.
So if you think of caffeine and coffee as waking you up at night, you probably don’t
want to be drinking that, but there are other teas that you can use to help calm you down
and bring you down to a nice mental space for you to get to sleep.
And usually, people think of chamomile but there’s also catnip and when I looked up
recently, it’s Hops flower, which I haven’t tried but apparently it’s very good for
helping calm you down and get you down to sleep.
And then for stress relief, there are some specific medicinal herbs that you can use
and I am talking about three in particular; one is Valerian root.
You can find these if you go to an herbal shop, Valerian root, Schizandra which is an
aromatic herb and very, very good for stress relief, calming the nerves all that kind of
stuff.
And another called Suma which I haven’t seen but again, Phil tell me, this is very
good.
And for your immune system, you can get specific teas to help boost your immunity.
Echinacea is one that most people think of.
Ginger is also really good.
I love to make a tea, just in the morning, I just put hot water and a few very slim,
very thin slices of fresh ginger root in a tea and just let that sit and steep.
Squeeze a lemon, really great for soothing sour throat and then astragalus is one that
is also really good for the immune system, a little more difficult to find, but this
is another one that you’d have to go to an herbal shop, usually to find.
But I saw recently a tea in a bag that had astragalus as part of it.
So you can see if it’s in there and rose hips apparently are very effective at boosting
the immune system.
So my herbal fruity tea that I love over here will be good for immunity.
Okay, that’s it for my rant on tea today.
I hope you all go and enjoy glass.
You can drink it hot or drink it cold, perfect in the summer to make some ice tea.
This is my fruity rose hips tea.
Delicious!
Okay, enjoy and I’ll see you guys next time.
[Music]