Official News - page 6

REAL LIFE NEWS: HAVE A NICE CUP OF TEA AND YOU'LL FEEL BETTER

by Hazed

As an English person, I subscribe to our national belief that a nice cup of tea can solve all kinds of problems. Now scientists have discovered evidence that a regular cuppa can help you recover more quickly from everyday life stresses.

The study was of black tea, not green or herbal varieties, and it found that people who drank tea were able to de-stress more quickly than those who drank a tea substitute. The tea helped to cut levels of the stress hormone cortisol circulating in the blood.

The study was carried out by University College London. They recruited 75 young male volunteers who were regular tea drinkers and split them into two groups to be monitored for six weeks. All the participants gave up their normal tea, coffee and other caffeinated beverages. One group was given a fruit-flavored caffeinated tea mixture, made up of the constituents of an average cup of black tea. The other group was given a caffeinated placebo identical in taste, but devoid of the active tea ingredients.

All of the drinks were tea-colored, but were designed not to smell or taste like tea; the researchers wanted to eliminate any factors that might have confused the study, such as the "comfort" effect from drinking a cup of tea.

Both groups were then subjected to a variety of challenging tasks which triggered substantial increases in blood pressure, heart rate and subjective stress levels. Tests showed that 50 minutes after the task, the cortisol levels of the tea-drinkers had dropped a lot more than the fake tea group. They also reported feeling more relaxed.

The conclusion is that tea doesn't stop you from getting stressed, but it helps you to calm down once the stressful situation is over. So it seems the English answer to any crisis - to put the kettle on and brew up - is the correct one!

It is unclear what ingredients in tea are responsible for this effect.

Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page