Leaves of Fortune in Your Tea Cup

Enlarge Image Image Gallery The leaves of Camellia sinensis are used to make tea, the worl's second-most popular beverage (after water). Study after study confirms tea's wide-ranging health benefits.

Until recently, most Americans and Europeans drank tea only as a tasty, mildly stimulating alternative to coffee. But that’s been changing, as the research on tea’s many health benefits becomes more widely known. The fact is, drinking a few cups of tea a day—especially green tea—reduces the risk of many serious conditions, notably heart disease and cancer.

Knowing the full extent of this herb’s healing abilities, you’ll want to make tea time more than an occasional, pleasant break from coffee … drinking tea daily could help you live a longer, healthier life.

Reading the Leaves

Tea (Camellia sinensis) is native to the area where southwest China meets northwest India. The plant is a subtropical evergreen tree, but growers prune it waist-high for easier harvest. China and India each produce about one-quarter of the world’s tea crop, with most of the rest grown in Sri Lanka, Kenya, Turkey, Indonesia and Vietnam.

The leaves of the tea plant are used to make four basic types of tea—white, green, oolong and black. In most cases, after harvest, the leaves wilt and oxidize, progressively darkening as their chlorophyll breaks down and combines with oxygen in the air. The tea industry calls this process fermentation. Fermentation is a misnomer, however, because the process does not involve microorganisms—what actually occurs is oxidation.

Variations on this basic process result in the different types of tea. Black tea is wilted and fully oxidized. Oolong tea is wilted and partially oxidized. Green tea is wilted but not oxidized. White tea, made only from immature leaves and buds, is picked, steamed and dried immediately—it is not wilted nor oxidized.

Black tea accounts for an estimated 78 percent of worldwide tea consumption. Green tea accounts for about 20 percent, and white and oolong together account for only around 2 percent.

A Wealth of Antioxidants 

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, tea is considered a “grease cutter” that prevents harm from fatty foods, according to Efrem Korngold, O.M.D., a practitioner of Chinese medicine in San Francisco, and coauthor (with Harriet Beinfield, L.Ac.) of Between Heaven and Earth: A Guide to Chinese Medicine (Ballantine Books, 1992).

Japanese researchers wondered if this traditional belief could be scientifically verified. In the 1980s, they found potent antioxidant compounds in tea, notably epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG). Antioxidants help prevent and repair the cell damage that can lead to heart disease and many cancers. Since then, dozens of additional studies have shown tea reduces risk of these diseases and helps treat them, thus validating Traditional Chinese Medicine’s claim.

The oxidation process that turns white and green teas into oolong and black teas destroys some of their EGCG.

NEXT PAGE: The health benefits of green and black tea and how they reduce the risk of heart disease.