According to various studies, drinking 3-4 cups of tea in a day on a regular basis provides good health benefits such as brain alertness, weight loss, and decrease in developing risks such as diabetes and heart disease.
Metro UK listed the five reasons why tea is good for the body, according to University of New Castle nutrition and dietetics professor, Claire Collins. As written in her health blog, Collins gathered a range of research findings focused on the benefits of drinking a "cuppa" tea.
All kinds of tea - green tea, black tea, white tea, and other varieties all come from both the buds and leaves of the plant Camellia sinesis.
Tea contains a large amount of bioactive polyphenols such as tannins and catechins (majorly found in green tea) - which specifically gives the drinker a calming effect two hours after a cup.
Also a brain-boosting component, catechins as well as caffeine, and L-theanine - an amino acid, activates the mood and cognitive functions prompting alertness and focus among tea drinkers for up to two hours after their fix.
According to Collins, a Dutch comparative study focused on the effects of caffeine and catechins to a person's energy expenditure and fat oxidation shows caffeine-only drinks were less likely to break down fat than "catechin-plus-caffeine" drinks.
Furthermore, a group that consumed catechins from green tea lost more weight than those who had caffeine-only intakes by 1.3kg.
Another tea research conducted focusing on type 2 diabetes suggests drinking three to four or more cups every day reduces the risk of having type 2 diabetes by 16%. These effects, however, were mostly found in women and Asians in "a pooled analysis of 12 cohort studies."
Meanwhile, studies focused on tea and heart diseases show that green tea and black tea both significantly reduce blood pressure. According to pooled results, black tea lowers LDL cholesterol while green tea lowers total cholesterol.
While drinking tea is popular to people around the world, Collins suggests boiling the water makes your tea safer to drink.
