Iced Tea and Your Health

Perhaps you have heard the news stories about how tea is good for you. Did you realize that this means tea of any temperature? In other words, iced is just as healthy for you as hot. This is a good thing, because many people will more readily drink iced than hot, especially in the summertime.

What is it about iced tea that is so good for us? To start with, iced tea is full of more than 700 different chemicals, such as antioxidants, amino acids, and vitamins C, E, and K. Antioxidants can help the body to protect itself against cell damage from molecules that are known as free radicals.

These free radicals can be quite harmful, even though they are all around us in our environment and in fact are even made by our bodies. They can damage our cells for years at at time, and scientists believe that they can lead to the development of such diseases as cancer and heart disease.

Tea will stop cancer cells from growing, and will also stop the blood vessels that the cancerous tumors feed on from developing. Iced tea, when consumed on a regular basis, can reduce our risk of prostate cancer, stomach cancer, breast and colon cancer, and stomach and esophagus cancer.

The antioxidants in iced tea that do so much for us are called flavonoids, and they are also in vegetables and fruits. Eight ounces of iced tea, whether it is green or black, contains anywhere from 145 to 200 mg of these flavonoids.

Iced tea has also been proven to help make our immune systems stronger, protect our teeth from plaque, and is thought to help us to burn more calories each day. Studies have been done in people who smoke. When these people were give four cups of green tea each day, there was less damage to their white blood cells as compared to those people who drank none at all.

The next time you get an insect bite or a small cut, you can see for yourself how tea can make a difference. Green is best for this. Pour a little freshly brewed iced green on a cotton pad, and rub it gently on the bite or cut. You will feel a difference almost at once. Itching will stop immediately, as well as minor soreness.

That is because tea is also a natural antibiotic. Have you noticed that green is being included as an ingredient in many skin care creams and lotions, including sunscreen? That is because it has been proven that green tea will help to block skin cancer that is caused by the sun.

Are you having problems with your blood pressure? Drinking just half a glass of iced green tea a day can help you to control it, and those who have normal blood pressure can keep it that way. Green will also help to prevent Alzheimer’s Disease as well as Parkinson’s Disease.

Drinking three servings of black iced tea has been found to reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes, and damage to the coronary arteries. Iced tea has even been shown to reduce cholesterol! Green seems to have gotten more press coverage as far as having certain health benefits, but tests and studies have shown that black can definitely do everything for our bodies that green can. Want to stop plaque from building up in your arteries? Drink iced tea! Would you like to have stronger bones? Iced tea will do that for you as well.

A word to the wise – don’t think you can get all of the goodness of tea from drinking the chilled canned and bottled selections from your closest convenience store’s cooler! In order to receive the listed benefits from iced tea, you must make sure to consume freshly brewed iced .

June of each year has been set aside as “National Iced Tea Month”. What better time of year to start the good habit of drinking iced tea every day?

Jon Stout is Chairman of the Golden Moon Tea Company. For more information about Iced Tea and green tea go to the Golden Moon Tea web site.