Tea turns down your physical stress reactions...

Today's post: Friday, 2-8-2008

I’ve read that drinking tea or green tea helps increase blood flow & keep your blood pressure in the normal zone or help lower it if it’s too high.

And, we did a post to warn people who want all the health benefits of drinking tea to ONLY drink it without milk. It’s been shown that adding milk to tea turns off many of its health benefits.

I’d also read that drinking tea might help you recover from stress but was less sure of that one so I didn’t do a post on it.

However, anything that helps you recover from stress increases your resilience and will help protect your health.

So, I’m delighted to include the article below that shows that drinking tea does indeed help you recover physically from stress.

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

“Stressed Out? Try Tea

By Kelley Herring

Stressed out? Reach for a soothing cup of black tea.
A recent study conducted by University College London researchers evaluated the effects of black tea on stress in the body. Seventy-five regular tea drinkers were split into two groups. All study participants gave up their normal tea, coffee, and caffeinated beverages. One group drank a caffeinated black tea. The control group drank a caffeinated fake-tea placebo.

To eliminate the "comforting" effect of drinking a cup of tea, researchers masked the sensory cues typically associated with tea drinking. Then they had the groups perform challenging tasks to evaluate their bodies' stress responses as measured by the hormone cortisol, blood pressure, blood platelets, and self-rated stress levels.
The tasks caused similar stress levels in both groups.

However, 50 minutes after performing the tasks, cortisol levels had dropped by an average of 47 percent in the tea-drinking group compared with a mere 27 percent in the fake-tea group. The researchers also found that blood platelet activation (which is linked to blood clotting and the risk of heart attacks) was lower in the tea drinkers. And the tea drinkers reported feeling more relaxed in the recovery period after performing the tasks.

Because tea is chemically complex, researchers can't yet pinpoint the ingredients responsible for its beneficial effects. What they do know is that enjoying a cup of black tea may speed recovery from the daily stresses in life. And that, in turn, can help reduce the risk of chronic illnesses such as heart disease.

Stock up on healthy and delicious organic black tea. It's calorie-free, packed with powerful phytonutrients, and can help soothe away stress too.

[Ed. Note: Kelley Herring is the founder and CEO of Healing Gourmet (www.healinggourmet.com), and is editor-in-chief of the Healing Gourmet book series.”

X *X* X * X * X
My comments added comments are these.:

I suspect strongly that green tea also works. But by all means drink some black tea also just in case. Also, black tea tends to have more caffeine than green tea. So at work, where many people experience the most stress & need to be sharpest it may make sense to drink black tea & drink green tea at home.

Also, if you get the jitters drinking coffee & are trying tea as caffeine substitute, you may find it easier to transition to tea if you drink black tea.

Lastly, if you dislike the taste of black tea, you can drink Earl Grey tea which has a much different taste but is still black tea; you can drink green tea instead but just use extra tea bags if you need extra caffeine, or you can add juice from a squeezed lemon, so your black tea tastes more like tart lemonade.