Stress in Daily Life

Stress is everywhere at home, at school and at work. Stress is simply a byproduct of our daily life. We hardly get rid of it. Stress contributes to dozens of deadly diseases: cancer, heart attack, heart stroke and high blood pressure. Stress unleashes a few super-charged hormones like epinephrine, norepineprine and cortisol. These hormones have the potential to cause substantial damage and harm to our health. For example, they can life blood pressure, release more fat and sugar into the bloodstream, and break down muscle tissue. Furthermore, stress can weaken our body’s immune system. Our immune system is so important in keeping us healthy. Any decrease in its functions will leave us vulnerable to different diseases. Therefore keeping these powerful hormones at moderate levels is crucial to maintaining good health.

Why Tea Can Sooth Stress

In a stressed-out world, it appears that drinking tea is one of many methods to get relieved. Just imagine this picture: the calming and relaxing ritual of boiling water, adding the leaves into a teapot, pouring hot water over the pot, inhaling the delicious aroma, sitting down with your family members and friends, and slowly sipping tea!

The soothing effect of drinking green tea is more than just psychological. A component called theanine found in green tea helps relieve mental stress and anxiety effectively. A growing number of evidences from medical research and clinical studies indicate that theanine, an amino acid found in green tea, can bring about positive changes to both your body and mind.

Theanine is a natural substance derived from the amino acid glutamate. Its main function is to lower stress and anxiety as well as elevate mood. It’s found in all of tea leaves. Quality green tea has high content of theanine in it . Theanine is able to successfully cross the blood-brain barrier and enter the central nervous system. Theanine can increase the activity of GABA, a neurotransmitter which helps inhibit the nervous system and induces a more peaceful and relaxed state. The end result is a relaxed and calming effect for those who drink green tea on a regular basis. Another benefit of taking theanine is the factor that it doesn’t have the adverse side effects usually seen with anti-anxiety medications such as valium.

A Few Tips for Drinking Green Tea

It is well known that sipping green tea for relaxation and recovery is a more natural way to relieve stress than taking prescription anti-anxiety medications. However, how much benefits you can get from drinking green tea is very personal. It largely depends on a few factors concerning your tea drinking habits. First of all, many brands of green tea in the market are low quality and carry very low level of theanine. Secondly, almost all of green tea contains certain level of caffeine. Caffeine may offset some of the anti-anxiety effects. Lastly, how much and how often you drink tea also affects how tea’s soothing effects played out on you. It takes a while and reasonable quantity of tea drinking for those wonderful medical benefits to show up.

To get the maximum beneficial effects of theanine, you should keep a few things in mind. Always purchase high quality loose leaf green teas. Loose leaf green tea offers all of critical elements your body and mind need. If you’re sensitive to caffeine to some extent, you needn’t give up tea drinking completely. Just discard the first steeping and drink the second one. This can take up to eighty percent of the caffeine in green tea away. Keep in mind that it may take several cups of drinking for certain period of time to experience the positive effects of this wonderful beverage. It is not a one-night miracle.

Green Tea Also Helps You Live Longer

One interesting study conducted in Japan investigated more than 3,000 women over the age of 50 who regularly practiced the Japanese tea ceremony. The result indicated that these tea-drinking women lived longer than those in a control group who didn’t perform the tea ceremony.

However, no direct evidence told us whether it was because of the tea ceremony or the catechins, theanine or other health beneficial ingredients in green tea that helped relieve stress and prolong the lives of those Japanese women in the study.