Why drinking tea can help you in a crisis?

For centuries, tea has been used for much more than quenching thirst. All over the world, people drink to relax, revitalize and calm, and it’s something we need now more than ever.

In the UK, where 100 million cups of tea are consumed every day, according to the UK Tea Advisory Panel, tea remains part of the national psyche, despite a growing preference for lattes, espressos and flat whites. The sentiment that a restorative cup of tea makes everything better still holds true.

With tea consumption on the rise worldwide, the United Nations has designated May 21 as International Tea Day.

Even in the United States, a country long dominated by coffee, tea consumption is growing in popularity, with people consuming 0.4 kg a year, up from 0.36 kg in 2007, according to the United Nations, as people move away from soft drinks, milk and fruit juices.

Scientists are starting to look at how tea might affect mood and cognition. Specifically, they’re investigating whether the calming effects are a direct biological result of the tea’s compounds or stem from the context in which the drink is consumed: mixing your drink, choosing your favorite cup, and sitting down for a brief breather. Or both.

Green tea and black tea come from the same plant: Camellia sinensis. However, green tea is processed differently, resulting in higher levels of some of the compounds that scientists believe have positive effects on our mental health.

brain boost

Drinking green tea has been found to improve brain function in healthy people, said Stefan Borgwardt, chairman and director of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the University of Lübeck in Germany.

In a 2014 study, he gave green tea extracts equivalent to one to two cups of green tea to 12 healthy volunteers and took images of their brains to analyze changes in connectivity within certain brain regions.

“We noticed increased connectivity in brain regions associated with working memory,” he said via email.

And a 2017 review of more than 100 studies he co-authored found that green tea can affect the brain in three ways: It can influence psychopathological symptoms, such as reducing anxiety; in cognition, by benefiting memory and attention; and brain function, specifically memory.

That review concluded that “it would be desirable” for more Westerners to consume at least 100 milliliters of green tea a day “to protect neurocognitive function.”

However, Borgwardt cautioned that the effects are not large and current evidence is mostly provided by small-scale studies.

different compounds

What is less clear is which compounds found in tea are responsible for various improvements in our brain power and whether they work alone or together.

The most important are antioxidants such as epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), the most abundant, followed by L-theanine, an amino acid found in tea leaves, and caffeine.

Borgwardt said the benefits likely aren’t the result of just one component, but are linked to the presence of caffeine and L-theanine.

There are also suggestions that tea can improve symptoms of depression, dementia and Down syndrome.

One study, conducted in South Korea in 2018, found that frequent green tea drinkers were 21% less likely to develop lifetime depression than non-drinkers. However, as this is an observational study, it was not possible to establish cause and effect, only an association.

Borgwardt said animal studies have suggested there are changes in the brain’s gray matter, and potentially these effects of tea could be used to target psychiatric illnesses like depression and dementia.

But he noted that the research was at a very early stage and that experimental studies would need to be confirmed by larger clinical trials before drawing any conclusions.

no harm

Tea also has some benefits for our physical health: it is associated with a longer life, it lowers blood pressure, and it can also have a fat-burning effect.

Gunter Kuhnle, associate professor in the Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Reading, UK, researches the benefits of flavonoids, found in tea, cocoa and some fruits.

He said one of the problems with evaluating the benefits of tea and its beneficial compounds is that studies reporting the effects are often observational, relying on subjective self-reports and the impact of how foods are prepared and consumed.

We need better data to really assess tea’s benefits on our physical and mental well-being, with many differences in how it’s consumed in different countries, Kuhnle said.

He noted that in the UK tea is a typical working-class drink, while in the US it is a drink more commonly associated with the upper class. Therefore, studies in the United States may show much more benefit, but this could be due to socioeconomic background.

However, with the exception of green tea supplements, which have been linked to liver damage, and boiling tea, which has been linked to esophageal cancer, there’s no real downside to a cup of tea, Kuhnle said. As a German living in the UK, he has embraced tradition.

“I think most people thrive on rituals. It’s kind of comforting. If something’s wrong, you need a cup of tea.”