Black Tea Benefits – Lower Blood Sugar Levels
When next you've got the opportunity to try black tea - Forget the 5,000 years of use in China and think instead about the multiple health benefits the Black Tea might bring to you, which now include reduced blood sugar levels.
You have most likely heard about how black tea improves protection 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 ailments where a cup of dark tea ( without milk or sugar ) might be just what you want.
The recent work out of Tianjin University in China found that black tea contains a compound that works just like oral medicines Precose and Glyset - pharmaceuticals now used to manipulate blood sugar levels for patients with type 2 diabetes.
The naturally occurring polysaccharide compound in black tea is at levels greater than in either green or oolong tea.
Haixia Chen and comrades report that the polysaccharides discovered in black tea prohibit the activity of an enzyme known as alpha-glucosidase that changes complex carbohydrates to sugar.
This is the way in which the prescribed drugs work also.
Research has demonstrated for a while that polysaccharides might be of value to those with diabetes because they help to stop the assimilation of sugar. According to the team, the black variety of tea was also found to have the best scavenging effect on free radicals, those stressful compounds believed by many to be involved in the development of cancer and other sicknesses.
So can you drink black tea in place of an oral diabetic medication?
No - Never try a change without speaking with your own doctor.
Chen's team can't say for sure that just drinking the tea would be enough . The research used chemical extraction methods, not the brewing as you might at home, to get the polysaccharides from the teas they'd purchased at local markets.
Traditional teas come from exactly the same plant. It's really the amount of processing that makes the difference in the color, the black having oxidized ( interacted with oxygen until the leaves darkened ) as it goes thru all the steps in the tea creation processes. Conventional processing of the black variety is not anything like fermenting, there isn't any yeast involved, just the tea leaves and oxygen.
It is important to know that thanks to the way black tea is manufactured, it does have a far higher caffeine content than the other teas - green, white or oolong. One cup of black tea has about 50 milligrams of caffeine when compared to coffee, which has from sixty five to 175 milligrams of caffeine per cup.
In fact, in many parts of the world tea, not coffee is employed as the wake-me-up at the beginning 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 part of a blend - you'll be amazed at the numerous selections. You'll want to try several brands to find the flavor and depth of color you like best, and be sure to brew the leaves lose in a pleasant, pot-bellied teapot so they can unfurl all of the way to make a drink that is's robust and delicious, and likely good for you too!
The black tea benefits are definitely inspiring, and with this research we could be close to another discovery for regulating 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.