Adverse Impact of tea on our health

If you have gone from drinking one or two small cups of tea, with a little bit of milk (0:08) and sweetener added, to now having multiple cups, empty stomach, with a potency that you (0:14) would never give your children, then I think it is worth understanding what so much of (0:19) tea could be doing to the insides of your body and why you need to reduce it.

Malabsorption

 To start with, tea directly impacts the stomach lining and the lining of our small intestine. (0:30) These are also the two areas where maximum nutrition absorption happens in our body. So if these areas get damaged or burned, then the body can often find itself in a state of (0:41) malabsorption. Some of the classic symptoms of this is actually a deficiency of the B vitamins. (0:50) Now, there is also B12, which needs something called the intrinsic factor, which is produced (0:56) in the lining of the stomach.

So when the stomach starts feeling very burned or damaged, (1:01) this intrinsic factor also takes a beating, and this is often a reason why people have B12 (1:08) deficiencies. It’s not just that their diets are deficient of it, it is also that the factor (1:15) needed to absorb it is not getting made in the stomach. Prolonged malnutrition or malabsorption (1:22) can also lead to chronic anemia, which is often a side effect of too much tea drinking (1:28) on an empty stomach.

Acidity

The other very important thing that happens is a state of acidity. (1:36) Now, a lot of people who are regular tea drinkers do know that their stomachs get acidic. (1:42) They often feel it as a slight burning or sometimes as headaches, which then can be felt (1:47) at the top of their head.

There is sometimes burning in the eyes or a little stinging in the (1:53) eyes or also sometimes burning in the ears. These are all signs of acidity. Prolonged acidity (2:01) can harm the what we call the walls or the splinters between the gut organs like the esophagus (2:08) and the stomach, and after a while your stomach content can start coming back into the mouth.

(2:16) Now, this is experienced as acid reflux, especially when people lie down horizontal (2:21) or especially when they try and sleep at night. Too much of acidity in the body then also makes (2:28) the body pull out calcium from the bones to calm this acidity. And in the long run, (2:34) one can end up with bone disease, which is often in naturopathy called acidic bones.

Healthier Drinks to Substitute Tea

(2:40) If all this is now already a state that your body is in, then I think it’s worth understanding (2:47) how do we reduce our tea habit or how do we substitute it with slightly better drinks. (2:56) Three drink substitutions that I recommend for people who are heavy tea drinkers, (3:01) because these also calm the stomach and actually give some nutrition back, (3:07) are one, carrot juice.

1. Carrot juice is quite alkaline as a substance, so when we consume it (3:15) as especially the first thing in the morning, it calms and also repairs the stomach lining, (3:21) which might have been damaged because it does have component of vitamin A in it.
2. Buttermilk or what we call chaas. This helps again calm the lining of the (3:33) stomach as well as give back some of the B vitamins which we have talked about earlier, (3:39) and especially the B12 vitamin. You can have it as a sweet drink by adding a little honey to it, (3:47) or you can have it as a salty drink by adding a little bit of rock salt and roasted cumin to it.
3. This is especially for those for whom tea represents really something hot in a (4:01) cup or a mug, is to then have hot honey lemon water. Now if you are on the anemic side, (4:09) then I would say use more honey and less lemon, otherwise you can take a call between the ratio (4:15) of honey and lemon you want to put in this drink. So these three drinks work best (4:22) as tea substitutions.

To Reduce the Habit

The other thing we want to do is reduce our tea drinking habit, (4:28) and there are three four things that really help here.

1. Don’t have an empty stomach
2. Make sure that you have eaten something solid and then you are drinking your cup of tea.
3. Reduce it by using the principle of half. So if you have four cups, (4:45) bring it down to two cups. If you have 300 ml in one go, try to bring it down to 150 ml (4:53) every time you drink. The mind tends to relate to numbers and cutting it by half tends to work here.
4. Don’t brew it too much without milk or a little sweetener.