I came across this video about the health benefits of tea from Healthcare Triage Youtube and I am sharing it as I found it very interesting.
First off – I drink tea because it tastes good and I have a positive emotional experience associated with it. I don’t drink tea for any claimed magical health benefits, though I do drink a cup of a cheesecake flavored dessert tea to make my sweet tooth happy when I want actual cheesecake, as well as drink a round of matcha when I want a bunch of energy for a work out. I don’t like to talk about tea health stuff unless there’s some good research behind it, and with that there’s so much research out there. Nor do I ever want to back some bogus claim (you guys don’t wanna know how many green tea weight loss companies email me asking me to review their magical products).
Anyways, I am linking this video as I found it very informative and covers a lot of studies with large amount of participants, so they did all the work for us! He also covers all research with a critical eye at design, which is great. Many of the studies were done in countries who drink more tea than the general population and were observational, so actual cause is hard to determine.
TLDR: Drink tea because you like it. There is little harms and maybe some benefits to drinking tea. The benefits stated for drinking tea is to be taken with a grain of salt.
I’d also like to add if you drink tea because you like it you will certainly enjoy it more than drinking it because you should because it is healthy, just by mental association. Back when I reviewed a bucket load of matcha, some sellers treated their product like medicine with dosage instructions, giving them excuse if their tea tasted bad (or you made it incorrectly so it tasted bad) as it is okay for medicine to taste bad.
I can tell you all that all my tea drinking didn’t stop me from hurting my ankle last week. I’m still on wobbling around on crutches and breaking things over a week later.
