The Health Benefits of Drinking Tea

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Outside a cape style home in Lee, New Hampshire snow fell steadily. Inside a group of women and young girls gathered around the dining room table sipping hot tea and eating delicate, creamy scones.

Beth Mennelle, national sales director for Simple Graces, served green and black tea then let guests brew a cup of tea of their choice.

Simple Graces of Durham, N.H. offers home based tea parties so people can sample and learn about the preparation of tea. They sell over 30 loose leaf teas and herbal blends along with tea sets and accessories through their home parties.

“I really should be drinking more tea,” is a typical comment from Simple Graces customers, said John LaBonty, vice president of sales and marketing for Simple Graces.

“The best reason to drink tea is (it is) high (in) antioxidants,” said Esther Kim, a registered dietician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston who is working on her PhD. in nutrition at Harvard.

Drink three to six cups of tea a day, says Kim, but check with your physician first especially if you have a medical condition.

High antioxidants have been tied to many health benefits.

Tea intake is “associated with decreased: incidence of cancers, cardiovascular disease, postmenopausal osteoporosis, blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, neurologic disease and infections,” said Dr. Jack F. Bukowski, Assistant Clinical Professor at Harvard Medical School from a presentation on the health effects of tea at the Take Me 2 Tea Expo West in March in Las Vegas, Nevada.

All tea comes from the same plant, camellia sinensis, with differences coming from soil, picking time and processing of the leaves, Mennelle explained. Some teas are mixed with flowers, spices, and oils for flavoring. Sh...

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...bout tea drinking. In general check with a doctor, especially if you have a medical condition, says Kim.

Pregnant women should avoid caffeine, which some tea has, and green tea may cause birth defects says, Kim.

Tea especially green tea extracts can also have bad interactions with chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer patients so a doctor needs to be consulted.

Heart patients and those who take coumadin or other blood thinners need to check with their physicians because tea has vitamin K, which can interfere with the effectiveness of the medication.

Although tea is not intended to replace the nutritional value of eating your fruits and vegetables, as Rema a Teavana customer said, “tea feels good.”

Melissa Lattman is a graduate journalism student at Northeastern University with an interest in the nutritional value of tea, coffee, and cocoa.

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