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A Home-Brewed Cup of Tea Has 20 Times the Healthy Stuff of Most Bottled Teas

If you turn to tea for a healthy dose of antioxidants, keep in mind that the antioxidants, or polyphenols, found in commercially bottled tea is up to 20 times less than you’ll find in home-brewed tea.

Photo by Shandi-lee Cox.

Research presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society points out:

“Consumers understand very well the concept of the health benefits from drinking tea or consuming other tea products,” said Shiming Li, Ph.D., who reported on the new study with Professor Chi-Tang Ho and his colleagues. “However, there is a huge gap between the perception that tea consumption is healthy and the actual amount of the healthful nutrients – polyphenols – found in bottled tea beverages. Our analysis of tea beverages found that the polyphenol content is extremely low.”

Li pointed out that in addition to the low polyphenol content, bottled commercial tea contains other substances, including large amounts of sugar and the accompanying calories that health-conscious consumers may be trying to avoid.

Keep in mind that some bottled teas did contain more significant levels of polyphenols than others, but they still “probably would carry little health benefit” due to the high sugar content of some of the brands, according to Li. Hit up the full article at the American Chemical Society’s site for more details. The plus side: You’re likely to save a lot of money and enjoy healthier drinks if you stick with doing it yourself.

Chamomile is used medicinally to treat sore stomach, irritable bowel syndrome, and as a gentle sleep aid. It is also used as a mild laxative and is anti-inflammatory and bactericidal. For a sore stomach, some recommend taking a cup every morning without food for two to three months. It is also used as a mouthwash against oral mucositis. It has acaricidal properties against certain mites, such as Psoroptes cuniculi.

If you have any kind of anxiety or stress, chamomile can help to sooth your stresses away. It helps to relax the body in a natural way. This is especially good for women who are pregnant and can take other types of medications or remedies for relaxation. A cup of chamomile tea is just the answer for someone who needs to calm his or her nerves.

It can be taken as a herbal tea, two teaspoons of dried flower per cup of tea, which should be steeped for ten to fifteen minutes while covered to avoid evaporation of the volatile oils. The marc should be pressed because of the formation of a new active principle inside the cells, which can then be released by rupturing the cell walls, though this substance only forms very close to boiling point.

One of the active ingredients of the essential oil from German chamomile is the terpene bisabolol. Other active ingredients include farnesene, chamazulene, flavonoids (including apigenin, quercetin, patuletin and luteolin) and coumarin.

Chamomile tea is also thought to be useful to suppress fungal growth, for example, misting it over seedlings may prevent damping off.

Possible side effects: Chamomile is a relative of ragweed and can cause allergy symptoms and can cross-react with ragweed pollen in individuals with ragweed allergies. It also contains coumarin and thus care should be taken to avoid potential drug interactions, e.g. with blood thinners.

For many centuries extracts of milk thistle have been recognized as “liver tonics.” Milk thistle has been reported to have protective effects on the liver and to greatly improve its function. It is typically used to treat liver cirrhosis, chronic hepatitis (liver inflammation), toxin-induced liver damage (including the prevention of severe liver damage from Amanita phalloides (death cap) mushroom poisoning), and gallbladder disorders.

A compound called silmarin is responsible for the effect that milk thistle has on the liver. To understand why it’s so important, it may help to understand how the liver works. The liver is one of the most important organs in the body. Its job is to clean the toxins from your body. And when it’s working properly, it keeps toxins from building up in the bloodstream. When your liver isn’t working, you don’t have much time left to live before something must be done.

Many things can affect the way the liver functions. Sometimes people have liver problems due to viral infections such as hepatitis. For others, heavy use of alcohol and other drugs can cause liver ailments. It’s also possible to have liver damage because of exposure to pollutants and environmental toxins that the liver must attack.

Research suggests that milk thistle extracts both prevent and repair damage to the liver from toxic chemicals and medications. Workers who had been exposed to vapors from toxic chemicals (toluene and/or xylene) for 5-20 years were given either a standardized milk thistle extract (80% silymarin) or placebo for 30 days. The workers taking the milk thistle extract showed significant improvement in liver function tests (ALT and AST) and platelet counts vs. the placebo group.

The efficacy of silymarin in preventing drug-induced liver damage in patients taking psychotropic drugs long-term has been investigated . This class of drugs is known to cause liver damage from oxidation of lipids. Patients taking silymarin in the study had less hepatic damage from the oxidation of lipids than patients taking the placebo.

In a 2009 study published in the journal Cancer, milk thistle showed promise in reducing the liver damaging effects of chemotherapy in a study of 50 children.

This research was presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society

BOSTON, August 22, 2010 — The first measurements of healthful antioxidant levels in commercial bottled tea beverages has concluded that health-conscious consumers may not be getting what they pay for: healthful doses of those antioxidants, or “poylphenols,” that may ward off a range of diseases.

Scientists reported here today at the 240^th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) that many of the increasingly popular beverages included in their study, beverages that account for $1 billion in annual sales in the United States alone, contain fewer polyphenols than a single cup of home-brewed green or black tea. Some contain such small amounts that consumers would have to drink 20 bottles to get the polyphenols present in one cup of tea.

“Consumers understand very well the concept of the health benefits from drinking tea or consuming other tea products,” said Shiming Li, Ph.D., who reported on the new study with Professor Chi-Tang Ho and his colleagues. “However, there is a huge gap between the perception that tea consumption is healthy and the actual amount of the healthful nutrients — polyphenols — found in bottled tea beverages. Our analysis of tea beverages found that the polyphenol content is extremely low.”

Li pointed out that in addition to the low polyphenol content, bottled commercial tea contains other substances, including large amounts of sugar and the accompanying calories that health-conscious consumers may be trying to avoid. He is an analytical and natural product chemist at WellGen, Inc., a biotechnology company in North Brunswick, N.J., that discovers and develops medical foods for patients with diseases, including a proprietary black tea product that will be marketed for its anti-inflammatory benefits, which are due in part to a high polyphenol content.

Li and colleagues measured the level of polyphenols — a group of natural antioxidants linked to anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, and anti-diabetic properties — of six brands of tea purchased from supermarkets. Half of them contained what Li characterized as “virtually no” antioxidants. The rest had small amounts of polyphenols that Li said probably would carry little health benefit, especially when considering the high sugar intake from tea beverages.

“Someone would have to drink bottle after bottle of these teas in some cases to receive health benefits,” he said. “I was surprised at the low polyphenol content. I didn’t expect it to be at such a low level.”

The six teas Li analyzed contained 81, 43, 40, 13, 4, and 3 milligrams (mg) of polyphenols per 16-ounce bottle. One average cup of home-brewed green or black tea, which costs only a few cents, contains 50-150 mg of polyphenols.

After water, tea is the world’s most widely consumed beverage. Tea sales in the United States have quadrupled since 1990 and now total about $7 billion annually. The major reason: Scientific evidence that the polyphenols and other antioxidants in tea, may reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease, and other afflictions.

Li said that some manufacturers do list polyphenol content on the bottle label. But the amounts may be incorrect because there are no industry or government standards or guidelines for measuring and listing the polyphenolic compounds in a given product. A regular tea bag, for example, weighs about 2.2 grams and could contain as much as 175 mg of polyphenols, Li said. But polyphenols degrade and disappear as the tea bag is steeped in hot water. The polyphenol content also may vary as manufacturers change their processes, including the quantity and quality of tea used to prepare a batch and the tea brewing time.

“Polyphenols are bitter and astringent, but to target as many consumers as they can, manufacturers want to keep the bitterness and astringency at a minimum,” Li explained. “The simplest way is to add less tea, which makes the tea polyphenol content low, but tastes smoother and sweeter.”

Li used a standard laboratory technique, termed high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), to make what he described as the first measurements of polyphenols in bottled tea beverages. He hopes the research will encourage similar use of HPLC by manufacturers and others to provide consumers with better nutritional information.

The plant contains several substances which can be used medicinally. It is rich in the minerals silicon (10%), potassium, and calcium, which gives it diuretic properties. It is prescribed to care for cartilage, tendons, and bones, and also polyps, epistasis, and bleeding. The buds are eaten as a vegetable in Japan and Korea in spring time.

In herbalism it is used to treat kidney and bladder problems, gastro-enteritis, and prostate and urinary infections, and is particularly indicated for enuresis (inability to control urination) in children.

Horsetail has an astringent effect on the urinary system proving especially valuable where there is bleeding in the urinary tract, and in cases of bladder or urethra inflammation, and prostate disease.

Cautions: horsetail breaks down vitamin B1 (thiamine) and should generally be taken long term only with a B vitamin supplement.

Rooibos Afrikaans for “red bush”, (Aspalathus linearis) is a broom-like member of the legume family of plants growing in South Africa.

The plant is used to make a herbal tea called rooibos tea, bush tea (esp. Southern Africa), redbush tea (esp. UK), South African red tea, or red tea. The product has been popular in Southern Africa for generations and is now consumed in many countries.

In South Africa it is common to drink rooibos tea without milk, but instead with a slice of lemon and sugar or honey to sweeten. The flavour of rooibos tea is often described as being naturally sweet (without sugar added) and slightly nutty. Several coffee shops in South Africa have recently begun to sell “red espresso”, which is concentrated rooibos served and presented in the style of ordinary espresso. This has given rise to rooibos-based variations of coffee drinks such as red lattes and red cappuccinos. Iced tea made from rooibos has recently been introduced in South Africa, Australia, and in the United States.

Rooibos is becoming more popular in Western countries particularly among health-conscious consumers, due to its high level of antioxidants such as aspalathin and nothofagin, its lack of caffeine, and its low tannin levels compared to fully oxidized black tea or unoxidized green tea leaves. Rooibos also contains a number of phenolic compounds, including flavanols, flavones, flavanones, and dihydrochalcones. Rooibos is purported to assist with nervous tension, allergies and digestive problems. Traditional medicinal uses of rooibos in South Africa include alleviating infantile colic, allergies, asthma and dermatological problems.