Subscribe: RSSEmailTwitterFacebookFriendFeed

Are There Health Benefits of Oolong Tea?

April 29, 2009 by Walt Sanberg  
Filed under Weight Loss

Oolong tea, a semi-fermented version of the tea plant camellia sinensis, has a variety of long-term health benefits. Although some claim that it has negative side effects, in truth, the only time that it gives off bad effects is when it is taken excessively. The good news is that oolong has just the right amount of healthy compounds and you can drink up to four cups of it on a daily basis.

Oolong tea is a semi fermented which means it contains much more polyphenols than other teas such as black tea. The polyphenols are called tannin by the scientific name.

So, what are the health benefits of oolong? It contains a wide variety of polyphenols that can bring so many great health benefits to a regular tea drinker. One such effect is detoxification and the reduction of triglycerides.

Triglycerides are the leading cause of obesity. Too many of them can lead to a lot of fat buildup. In China oolong tea has been used as a supplement to weight loss programs. It can aid in weight loss when combined with a healthy diet and exercise.

The polyphenols help to melt fat away that is excreted out of our systems. Oolong tea helps this by metabolizing fats faster than normal.

An experiment was conducted on laboratory rats and this has proven the prowess of oolong tea to prevent obesity. In the experiment, two groups of rats were given a high-calorie diet but only one group was given oolong to drink. After one and a half months, the rat group that drank oolong significantly was in a much better weight classification than the ones who were just given water.

There are many other benefits in addition to weight loss such as: lowering cholesterol levels, lowering high blood pressure, improving your immune system, digestive improvements, better healthier skin, and lowered levels of stress.

About the Author:

Does Oolong Tea Cause You To Get Headaches?

April 24, 2009 by Walt Sanberg  
Filed under Diet

The tea oolong is a mixture of green teas and black teas. It has been around for centuries and many actually drink oolong to relieve and cure headaches. To understand what causes headaches and why you may have gotten them after drinking lets look at what makes up oolong.

All teas go throught a fermentation process. Black tea goes through the process and through that black tea contains about 40mg of caffeine per cup. So this type of tea should be drank in limited quantities. It so happens that oolong tea is made up of some black tea. So if you drink a lot of oolong tea headaches can occur.

The second ingredient in Oolong tea is Green tea. Green tea is made in a more natural process without fermenting and it only contains 20mg caffeine per cup. It is full of antioxidants and has been found to help with weight loss in helping to fight heart disease and cancer.

Many people of china drink tea for medicinal purposes. One such treatment it is used for is to cure headaches. Researchers believe that when you have a headache tea helps to reduce the problem. It depends on your weight and genetics with how much you should drink.

People that suffer from headaches when taking Oolong tea may do so for any number of reasons. One of the reasons is the person is not used to drink caffeine therefore they can get a caffeine headache. Opposite of this may be that the person has reduced their caffeine intake, as too much is also not good and they are having withdrawals from the caffeine.

One of the many benefits of Oolong tea is that it has many antioxidant properties as mentioned above and has been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for years. When a person drinks Oolong tea their body begins to flush out toxins and free radicals that cause damage to the body. This process of cleansing and flushing these harmful agents from your body can actually cause a headache. So it is not actually the Oolong tea that is causing the headaches it is your body’s defense mechanism as harmful toxins are flushed out.

So does Oolong tea cause headaches? Not in the essence that it’s the tea that is causing the headache, it may be one of the underlying reasons mentioned above.

About the Author: