Black Tea Benefits – Reduced Blood Sugar
When next you have the opportunity to try black tea – Forget the five thousand years of consumption in China and think instead about the many health benefits that Black Tea might bring to you, which include lower blood sugar levels.
You have probably heard about how black tea improves immunity and heart health, now research appearing in the June thirty, 2009 issue of the book of Food Science, adds diabetes treatment to the list of infirmities where a cup of dark tea ( without milk or sugar ) may be just what you need.
The up to date research out of Tianjin school in China revealed that black tea does contain a substance that works just like oral medicines Precose and Glyset – pharmaceuticals now used to manage blood sugar levels for patients with type 2 diabetes.
The naturally occurring polysaccharide compound in black tea is at levels higher than in either green or oolong tea.
Haixia Chen and associates report the polysaccharides found in black tea prohibit the activity of an enzyme known as alpha-glucosidase that transforms starches to sugar.
This is how the pharmaceuticals work also.
Research has proven for a period of time that polysaccharides might have value to those with diabetes because they help stop the assimilation of sugar. According to the researchers, the black assortment of tea was also found to have the best scavenging effect on free radicals, those worrying compounds assumed by many to be concerned in the development of cancer and other diseases.
So can you drink black tea in place of an oral diabetic medication?
No – Never make a change like this without speaking with your own doctor.
Chen’s team must not say for sure that just drinking the tea would be enough . The study used chemical extraction techniques, not the brewing as you may at home, to get the polysaccharides from the teas they’d bought at local marketplaces.
Traditional teas come from the same plant. It’s essentially the quantity of processing that makes the difference in the color, the black having oxidized ( interacted with oxygen till the leaves darkened ) as it goes thru all the steps in the tea making process. Conventional processing of the black variety is not anything like fermenting, there isn’t any yeast involved, just the tea leaves and oxygen.
It’s important to grasp that thanks to the way black tea is processed, it does have a far higher caffeine content than the other teas – green, white or oolong. One cup of black tea has about 50 mg of caffeine when compared to coffee, which has from 65 to 175 milligrams of caffeine per cup.
Actually, in many parts of the Earth tea, not coffee is employed as the wake-me-up at the start of the day.
You can buy teas at most grocery stores, or try the organic brands from online ( or local ) natural health food sources.
Black varieties can be packed as a single tea or as a part of a mix – you’ll be dazzled at the many selections. You will need to try several brands to find the flavour and depth of color you like best, and be sure to brew the leaves lose in a nice, pot-bellied teapot so they can unfurl all of the way to form a drink that’s's tough and delicious, and very likely good for you too!
The black tea benefits are certainly galvanizing, and with this research we may be close to another breakthrough for controlling blood sugar levels.
Next – just head on over to the Daily Health Bulletin for more information on how to lower blood sugar, plus for a limited time get 5 free fantastic health reports. Click here for more details on how to lower blood sugar.