If You Want to Improve Your Health and Wellness, Try Drinking These Teas

There are thousands of different varieties of tea in the world, and almost as many different ways to drink them - if not more. So how do you know which tea is right for you? Believe it or not, the tea you drink should match your health and wellness goals. Below, we'll go into some of the best teas you can (and should) be drinking for optimal health. We hope you can use our advice to find a naturally brewed beverage which suits your diet and lifestyle.

Green Tea - Sencha Varietal

Lots of people may not be aware that there are different varieties of green tea. Well, there are! There are many different species of the green tea plant, camellia sinensis, as well as different ways of cultivating and harvesting them. These unique farming and cultivation techniques drastically change the type of tea you get on a molecular level. That's why you can't just drink any old green tea - you have to do a little research here on QuickVita in order to find out which type of green tea is right for you.

There are two important factors which make sencha green tea stand out from the crowd. For starters, it is farmed in direct sunlight. This direct access to Mother Nature's greatest source of energy provides a ton of botanical benefits for the sencha green tea leaf. The more direct sun exposure a tea leaf receives, the more polyphenols, antioxidants, and other healthful botanical extracts it produces.

Next, after harvesting, the sencha tea leaves are ground up into a fine powder and mixed into boiling water, kind of like the way you make instant coffee instead of brewing it by pouring hot water over the grounds. When you drink tea this way, you are ingesting the whole leaf, which many experts believe is more helpful than drinking extracts which get leached into hot water. You're getting some insoluble fiber, which is good for your gut health and your microbiome. You're also getting a greater quantity and purity of polyphenols from the leaf. So you're getting a pure, more concentrated dose of the best that green tea has to offer.

Yerba Mate...Tea?

Many people may not know this, but yerba mate isn't a technically a "tea". It's sort of like how champagne isn't technically champagne unless it is produced and sold from that eponymous region of France. It may be consumed like tea, it may taste like tea, and it may give you the same health benefits that tea does, but it is actually its own unique type of beverage. You learn something new here at QuickVita everyday, don't you?

Traditionally, you can only call a beverage "tea" if the leaves you use are from a specific plant, and if that plant is grown and cultivated in certain areas of Japan and/or China. None of these apply to yerba mate. The leaves which make up the yerba mate blend come from the ilex paraguariensis tree. This particular tree grows well and in abundance down in South America. The leaves at the bottom of the tree are given preferential treatment because they spend more time growing in the shade and are protected from uv damage. Sun-damaged leaves are usually passed over because of their bitter taste and lower nutritional value.

Yerba mate leaves contain over 39 different amino acids, minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants. Furthermore, yerba mate is pretty high in caffeine - but because it's coming from a natural source, it won't leave you feeling as jittery or as discombobulated as synthetic sources of caffeine will. The caffeine in yerba mate also gives you the benefit of thermogenesis, which ramps up your metabolism and helps you burn more calories during the day. So if you came to QuickVita looking for weight loss products, you might want to think about combining a good yerba mate tea with one of our effective dietary supplements for an even bigger boost.

Yerba mate tea is traditionally prepared by soaking the leaves in a small amount of warm water for about half a minute. Once you get the leaves warmed up, you fill the rest of the cup with boiling water. In South American culture, there are specially designed cups with filtered straws designed to help you drink the tea without worrying about spitting out leaves every sip. Many people like to get creative with their yerba mate and add in flavorful, aromatic ingredients like ginseng or orange peel. Naturally, such additions yield their own botanical health benefits as well.

Oolong Tea

Don't let the name fool you - oolong tea is actually a member of the green tea family. The only difference is the farming and cultivation methods. As opposed to growing in a more hospitable climate, oolong tea grows in higher altitudes and faces lower temperatures along with less access to the sun's rays. Once the leaves are harvested, farmers allow the leaves to oxidize for varying amounts of time. Allowing oolong tea leaves to oxidize for longer or shorter periods will have a dramatic effect on the flavor of the tea. Regular green tea leaves are immediately processed after picking, whereas oolong tea leaves require a little extra time and tender loving care.

The act of processing oolong tea leaves is a little more complex than processing green tea. You have to bruise the leaves, cool them, lightly roll them, roast them, roll them a second time, and allow them to dry before you have an oolong tea leaf which is ready to brew and drink. This process has direct effects on the caffeine content of the finished product. But caffeine isn't the only thing you get from the oolong tea leaf which helps you burn fat. A 2001 study exposed the fact that oolong tea helps your body consume 12% more of its own stored body fat compared to regular caffeine by itself. So you aren't just losing weight - you're losing that unhealthy body fat that you really want to get rid of.

We here at QuickVita want to do our best to help people like you live their best life. Whether that means getting advice from us on the best tea to drink, the best supplements to take, or other health and wellness strategies, we hope you get some benefit from visiting our site. Please check back soon for more blog entries on how to improve your health and wellness!