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Black Tea: a Stress Fighter for Stressful Times
Your mortgage is all messed up, your SUV is hungry, and food prices just skyrocketed, meaning your filet mignon is about to be replaced with a Big Mac.
Okay, so it's not quite like that, but hardly anyone would deny we live in stressful times, and certain shortages continue to loom on the economic horizon. From high gas prices to the poor conditions of the housing market, the new realities are taking their toll not just on the pocketbooks of Americans, but on their bodies, as stress leads to high blood pressure and increased cardiac risk.
As they try to balance good economics, savvy dieting and the efficient use of medicines, lots of Americans are taking refuge in natural products they believe will be cheap and effective dietary aids and stress reducers.
Now, it's black tea to the rescue! Recent studies at London universities showed a relationship between drinking black tea and lower levels of stress in young males. In two groups, one drinking black tea and the other drinking a placebo product, the study found that their stress levels diminished much faster after a stressful event among the black tea drinkers, leading some experts to consider looking closer into just how much black tea can help those in high stress conditions.
Similar studies have found a lot of other health benefits in drinking black tea, and now many are claiming that the combination of caffeine, antioxidants, and other elements in the leaves of traditional tea plants can help you lower your blood pressure and relax even in trying times. Lots of nutritional researchers point out that tea has always been related to relaxation. Older societies knew about black tea's soothing properties, but as modern science bears out these 'folk' remedies, lots of new customers are flocking to the shelves to look at how they can profit from the unique properties of black tea for stress reduction, morning alertness, and even weight loss, as the caffeine in black tea also acts as a metabolic aid.
All of these are reasons many people in the West are considering switching from coffee to drinking black tea or other tea varieties. Coffee is also a natural product, but nutritionists argue that the coffee bean does not have some of the most important elements, like polyphenol antioxidants, that are found in tea.
Some coffee drinkers also prefer the feeling they get from tea rather than coffee in the morning. Tea drinkers sometimes refer to the caffeine rich black teas as a "kinder and gentler" morning drink than the often hard-edged caffeine jolt they get from coffee.
