Drinking tea can boost your health

That’s right. Tea is increasingly being recommended as a disease fighter, used to counter cancer, heart congestion, tooth decay, stroke and weight issues, says Sharon Johnson, who teaches nutrition classes for the Oregon State University Extension Service. In January, she led a workshop at Providence Medford Medical Center about the health benefits of tea.

"If you drink three cups of tea a day, it’s the same, in terms of antioxidant and antibacterial effect on your body, as eating six apples," says Johnson. "In tests on rodents, tea is proven to have incredible health benefits. And it’s popular in most of the world, not America, because it stimulates without rattling you or causing insomnia."

Tea fanciers such as Johnson all seem ready to steep the rest of us in the health lore of the world’s most popular drink after water. While herbal teas offer symptomatic help — echinacea for colds, St. John’s Wort for depression or comfrey for insomnia — only real tea is touted as a broad-spectrum health drink, a distinction that’s bringing on a significant increase in popularity.

"Sales are going up considerably," says tea buyer Sanya Brown of the Ashland Food Co-op. "Our buyers are extremely well-educated and are hearing more and more about how black and green teas lower cholesterol and blood pressure, suppress viral activity, dilate bronchial tubes and work against colon, intestinal and rectal cancer."

These claims are backed up by studies, says Johnson. Heavy tea drinkers (more than 20 cups a day) have a 44 percent lower death rate from heart disease, while drinkers of more than 14 cups a week have a 28 percent lower rate.

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In studies in Holland, strokes were much less likely and less severe in people who drank even a cup and a half of black tea a day. Studies in Japan showed a one-third drop in lung cancer and a 60 percent decline in stomach cancer among those who drank even small amounts of tea.

All this goes back to the antioxidants in the camellia sinensis plant, from which tea is made. Health experts believe the antioxidants protect against heart disease, stroke and cancer by limiting damage from free radicals — molecules naturally produced in cell division, but which become dangerous when exacerbated by sunlight, toxins and smoking, says Johnson.

Black tea has less than half the caffeine of coffee and produces a calm, balanced lift, with a sense of increased mental clarity but none of the nervous, manic "wired" feeling of coffee, fanciers say. Green tea is the raw plant, not fermented like black tea, and has almost no caffeine.

Coffee drinkers, who often express passion for their brew, may be inclined to ask, if tea is so good for you, why isn’t coffee? It just isn’t. It may have a few vitamins but it makes no health claims and, being a diuretic, can’t be said to hydrate you, says Johnson.

Still, says the Co-op’s Brown, "Coffee is my first love."

"I love my cup or two of coffee in the morning," agrees Johnson, "but I drink only tea after that."

In addition to the health and addiction questions, people are "tuning into the karma of coffee," says Elizabeth Bretko of Heartsong Herbal Brewing Co. in Jacksonville, a maker of chai, becoming more aware of how much clear-cut land and third-world labor is required to grow it for billions of java junkies.

"Coffee is fun occasionally," allows Bretko, "but it has long-term bad effects like dehydration and stripping vitamins and minerals out of your body."

Tea, on the other hand, can be counted as part of those eight glasses of water we’re always told to drink each day, says Johnson.

And, in contrast to coffee, says Brendan Girard, co-owner of EcoTeas in Ashland, tea "requires you to slow down, heat the water, steep the tea. It’s a healthful act that makes us take time out, which in this fast-pace culture is a health benefit in itself."

"It’s an art and it’s no accident the Japanese have made a tea ceremony around it," says Johnson, who was surprised to have 100 students pre-register for the hospital’s tea workshop. "People have a love affair with their tea, and many even brought their beloved tea pot to show off."

How is the art of tea done? You use loose tea, not bags, which contain the lower quality parts of the plant, says Bretko. You put in one heaping teaspoon per person "and one for the pot."

You steep well to bring out the flavonoids (antioxidants), then strain, sit back and drink a toast to your health.

John Darling is a free-lance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at jdarling@jeffnet.org.

Sorting out the teas