11 Health Benefits of Drinking Tea That You Need to Know

Tea was first cultivated in China where it was valued for its medicinal qualities long before it was consumed as a drink. It is now widely recognized that drinking tea has many health benefits, but how many can you name? Here is our list of some of the most important.

Tea is full of antioxidants

Tea is particularly rich in polyphenols, especially catechins and epicatechins, two powerful antioxidants. Our bodies need antioxidants to fight against molecules known as free radicals that can damage DNA and that may also be linked to Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s and other conditions.

While coffee is now the most common source of antioxidants (including polyphenols) in the modern American diet. Compared with coffee, tea contains even more, especially green and white teas. This is an important benefit of regular tea drinking.

Tea may lower the risk of heart disease

While further studies are still required to establish a clear link, it would appear that regular consumption of tea, including both green and black teas, reduces the risk of heart disease.

Although this link has not been conclusively proved, it is quite possible that developing a daily tea drinking habit could offer some protection against this condition.

Tea may lower the risk of heart attack and stroke

The link between tea drinking and a lower risk of heart attack and stroke is more firmly established. It has been shown that those drinking three cups of tea per day have a reduced risk of both conditions.

For those drinking four cups per day, the reduction in the risk of heart attack is even more pronounced.

Again, this evidence would tend to suggest that drinking tea is very positive, especially for those considered at higher risk.

Tea helps you stay hydrated

We all know how important it is to take on enough fluids every day to stay properly hydrated. While the best option is always water, this may become a little tedious after a while. However, many other drinks like sodas are far from healthy.

This is not the case with tea, making it an ideal option to add some variation to what you drink each day. It also doesn’t have the strong diuretic effect of coffee (meaning coffee makes you want to use the bathroom more often), making it a more suitable choice for this reason too.

Tea contains less caffeine than coffee

In recent years, researchers have begun to reveal the many health benefits associated with drinking coffee, and many of these benefits are due to the caffeine content. However, for most people, drinking coffee later in the day can lead to difficulty sleeping at night.

This means that tea, with a lower caffeine content, could be a much better choice as an afternoon beverage.

Sure, many of us need the more intense caffeine hit provided by a strong cup of coffee first thing in the morning, and perhaps when a real pick-me-up is required to kickstart your day, tea is no substitute.

With some of the more modern coffee makers, like a Keurig recent model, we can even program the machine to have a steaming coffee waiting for us when the alarm goes off, taking away the hassle of brewing coffee just after we first crawl out of our beds.

However, in the afternoon, by switching to tea, you can benefit from the advantages of a small dose of caffeine – like increased concentration and alertness – without making it difficult to sleep at night. In this way, tea gives you the best of both worlds.

Tea is calorie-free and may even help with weight loss

As long as you don’t add anything like milk or sugar, tea has no calories, meaning you can drink as much as you like without gaining weight.

Furthermore, it is thought that drinking tea slightly increases your metabolic rate, so you will actually burn more calories during the day than if you didn’t drink tea. This may in turn aid you in your quest to shed a few pounds – and every little helps.

Tea is good for your teeth

Drinking tea can change the pH level in your mouth, helping to protect your teeth and fight against cavities. Unlike many drinks, it also does not erode tooth enamel (the hard layer that protects our teeth, but which never grows back once gone), making it doubly recommended for dental health.

Tea is good for your bones

Some studies have suggested that tea drinkers have higher bone density than non-tea drinkers. Again, the results are not yet conclusive, and more research is required, but it would seem that drinking tea daily may help keep your bones healthy.

Tea produces a calm but alert state of mind

According to tea lore, tea drinking first became widespread among Buddhist monks in China who noticed its ability to keep them awake and clear-minded while meditating.

Whether you require this effect for meditating, studying or working, it is one of the benefits that people have appreciated in tea for many hundreds of years.

Tea can help fight against many cancers

It is thought that tea gives your body a boost in its fight against a range of cancers, including breast, colon and lung cancer. More research is required to establish scientific proof, but for the moment, this is at least considered a likely health benefit tea may bring.

Tea may help with digestion

Another of the reasons tea became popular in China is because of its supposed ability to aid digestion. Drinking tea during and after meals has long been common in China at least partly due to this reason. If you wish to enjoy the same benefit, you might consider adopting the practice.

So many benefits and almost no negative effects

As you can see, regular consumption of tea is known to have many health benefits, and many others are suspected, while there are almost no negative effects – it is hard to consume enough tea for the caffeine to do any harm unless you have a particular sensitivity to it.

All this means that developing a regular tea drinking habit really can be very advantageous to both your short-term and your long-term health!