“A woman is like a tea bag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.”

Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady

Advantages & Disadvantages of Drinking Tea

Drinking tea is quite popular in many countries all over the world.

It is deeply anchored in many cultures.

Yet, what makes tea so special?

To answer this question, we have to look at the advantages and disadvantages of tea.

In this article, the pros and cons of tea drinking are examined in detail.

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Advantages of Drinking Tea

1. Substitute for coffee
2. Good to drink enough during the day
3. Your productivity might increase
4. May improve your overall motivation
5. You may wake up faster in the morning
6. Tea has the potential to calm you down
7. Hot beverages are good for the soul
8. Tea may contribute to losing weight
9. Tea drinking as socializing opportunity
10. Drinking tea can be refreshing
11. May help to reduce stress levels
12. Can positively affect your skin
13. Tea may give you a boost in brainpower
14. Some teas may strengthen our immune system
15. Tea may be good for our digestive system
16. Health benefits from tea
17. Tea drinking as a way of life
18. Important commodity
19. Many jobs related to the tea industry
20. Many small farmers make a living out of tea

Substitute for coffee

One upside of tea is that it can be a suitable substitute for coffee.

Many people have problems getting up in the morning and need something that will boost their performance in the morning.

If you do not like the taste of coffee or you do not want to consume it due to various other reasons, drinking tea might be a valid alternative instead since those two beverages can have quite similar effects.

Good to drink enough during the day

We all know that drinking sufficient amounts of liquids is crucial to stay healthy.

However, many people struggle with drinking sufficient amounts of water during the day.

If you are one of those people, drinking tea may help you significantly in this regard since it can add some interesting flavors to your water and you may be more willing to drink sufficient amounts of fluids through tea consumption.

Your productivity might increase

There are several sorts of teas out there.

While some are meant to calm you down, others can push you quite a lot.

Those pushing sorts may vastly increase your level of productivity, which can be extremely important in stressful times when you drown in work and you don’t know how to manage all the work.

Therefore, drinking tea may also help you to overcome those stressful phases in your life since you may get more work done over the course of the respective period.

May improve your overall motivation

Drinking tea may also increase your overall level of motivation.

After a few years in the world of work, may of us are quite tired about it and do not want to go to work anymore.

This is especially true if you work in a job you actually do not like at all and you literally look at the clock every few minutes until the day is finally over.

However, even though you might not like your work too much, there are some measures you can take to make your workday more acceptable.

One way to boost your level of motivation is to drink tea since there are some ingredients in it that improve our overall motivation levels to achieve things.

By doing so, you can manipulate your brain to a certain extent in order to get more motivated.

You may wake up faster in the morning

Tea contains a compound called theine, which is quite similar to caffeine and helps us to get awake quicker in the morning.

Hence, especially if you are one of those persons who have a quite hard time in the morning to focus and to concentrate on your work since you are too tired, drinking tea may help you a lot since through the intake of sufficient amounts of theine, you can boost your performance in the early morning since you will get awake sooner than without.

Tea has the potential to calm you down

While some teas will rather push you, others will have the potential to calm you down a lot.

This may be especially important during stressful times in which you have to focus on the one hand but still remain calm on the other hand.

Thus, in stressful times where it is crucial to act in a calm manner, drinking the right type of tea can really help you to stay on in a stable mental frame to get your work done.

Hot beverages are good for the soul

Tea can not only be quite effective to improve our overall performance, it can also be considered to be good for our soul.

If you haven’t tried tea before, you will soon notice a change in your perception of the world once you try it.

Everything will be a little bit better and you may feel some kind of inner peace.

Consequently, drinking tea can significantly improve our overall quality of life.

Tea may contribute to losing weight

Since tea has its own flavors, it may also be a great tool to lose weight.

While you might consume large amounts of soft drinks or other beverages that contain excessive amounts of sugar, switching to tea instead could significantly help you to lose weight since tea has zero calories if you don’t put sugar or milk in it.

Therefore, if you suffer from obesity and you want to urgently lose weight, drinking tea can significantly support the mission since you will be able to enjoy a flavorful beverage while not consuming any calories at the same time.

Tea drinking as socializing opportunity

In many cultures, tea is not only a nice beverage, but tea drinking is also a social activity where people meet up with each other.

Similar to our Western culture where most people get together to drink beer or other alcoholic beverages, tea is the mean drink for socializing in other parts of the world.

Hence, tea also plays a great role in strengthening the social cohesion of society in many countries of our planet.

Drinking tea can be refreshing

Even though tea is usually hot, it can still be kind of refreshing.

In many countries with a hot climate, people drink tea since it helps them with their circulatory system.

Thus, although it seems counterintuitive to drink hot beverages in hot climates, it is usually quite good for our body and gives us much more energy compared to consuming ice-cold drinks.

May help to reduce stress levels

Many people in our nowadays society also suffer from significant stress levels.

We all suffer from a certain kind of information overflow and not everyone is able to process all the information in a healthy manner.

Thus, this may lead to significant emotional stress. In order to reduce your stress level, drinking tea may help you a lot since on the one hand, there are helpful ingredients in tea that can calm you down and on the other hand, drinking tea can help you taking a break from your daily tasks so you will be able to relax during this time of the day.

Can positively affect your skin

Some teas may also contain ingredients that can be quite beneficial for your skin.

Many skin problems are due to some sort of digestive issue and drinking tea can reduce those issues.

In turn, also your skin tends to look better if you drink the right type of tea on a regular basis.

Tea may give you a boost in brainpower

Another advantage of teas is that they might also improve your overall mental capacities and your brainpower.

There might be times in your life where you have to fight in order to deal with all the things that may potentially harm you.

I such stressful periods in your life, it is crucial that you do everything that is necessary to stay on track.

Even though tea is no magic pill to solve your problems, it can still give you a certain boost in mental power so that you can tackle your issues with more power in order to overcome them as quickly as possible.

Some teas may strengthen our immune system

Some teas may also contain ingredients that are good for our overall immune system.

This can be due to chemical reactions in our body, but also due to the fact that drinking tea can calm us down and if we are in a better mood, also our immune system will become stronger since body and brain depend on each other and if you are in a good mental state, also the chances that you get certain diseases become lower.

Tea may be good for our digestive system

There are also some teas out there that can significantly help us to improve our overall digestive system.

Many people in our current society suffer from digestive issues since they either eat rather unhealthily or suffer from excessive levels of stress.

Both often result in serious digestive issues.

However, by using tea on a regular basis, we can overcome those digestive problems to a certain extent.

Health benefits from tea

In general, tea contains many compounds that can be quite beneficial for our health.

For instance, antioxidants that are contained in many sorts of tea are known to reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

Thus, by drinking moderate levels of tea on a daily basis, you can do your body a favor since you may be able to decrease the risk of serious health problems.

Tea drinking as a way of life

Apart from the various potential health effects, drinking tea can also be a way of life.

Many people really enjoy getting together and consuming high-quality tea on a regular basis.

Especially in Eastern countries, many people enjoy drinking tea on a regular basis as a crucial part of their daily life and living without tea might be rather unthinkable for them.

Important commodity

Tea is not only important to improve the overall quality of life of millions or even billions of people on our planet, it is also a quite important commodity and trading good for many countries.

Some countries even mainly rely on the export of tea in order to make enough money to provide a good overall public infrastructure.

Thus, for those countries, tea is crucial in order to strengthen the local economy and to ensure sufficient wealth levels for the local population.

Many jobs related to the tea industry

Since the tea industry is quite big and numerous reputable companies engage in this market, it also provides job opportunities for millions of people all over the globe.

Especially for people who live in poor remote parts of our planet, those jobs may be crucial in order to ensure their income and their livelihood due to a lack of alternatives.

Many small farmers make a living out of tea

There are also many small farmers around the world who make their living with tea as their single source of income.

In many cases, those tea farms are family businesses and in order to feed the whole family, farmers heavily rely on selling tea.

Thus, without the tea industry, millions of people all over the world might struggle to survive.

Disadvantages of Tea

1. Theine can be considered to be a drug
2. Tea will not push you as much as coffee
3. Some sorts of tea can keep you awake at night
4. Theine tolerance
5. Tea drinking may be problematic during pregnancy
6. Mood swings
7. Theine withdrawal
8. Tea consumption may lead to nutrient loss
9. Excessive amounts of tea are not good for your health
10. Some people may have a tea intolerance or allergy
11. Exploitation of local farmers

Theine can be considered to be a drug

As we have seen from the previous analysis, there are many advantages of tea and it can really improve our overall quality of life.

However, there are also some issues related to drinking tea.

One downside of tea is that it contains theine, which is quite similar to caffeine and can also be considered to be a drug.

Although it is legal, it implies the characteristics of other harmful drugs like a certain level of mental or even physical dependence.

Tea will not push you as much as coffee

Even though the theine that is contained in tea is quite similar to caffeine, it only occurs in lower doses compared to coffee and therefore, also the pushing effects are not as strong compared to drinking coffee.

Thus, if you rely on those pushing effects to get awake quicker, you might rather want to drink coffee than tea.

Some sorts of tea can keep you awake at night

Due to the theine contained in many sorts of tea, drinking tea can also keep you awake at night.

This is especially true for people who react rather sensitive even to smaller doses of theine.

Hence, if you are one of those people and you suffer from sleeping problems, try to avoid drinking tea for a certain period of time and see if your sleeping quality improves.

Drinking tea in the late evening can be especially harmful to your sleep since your body will be full of theine and falling asleep may be quite difficult due to that.

Theine tolerance

Similar to caffeine in coffee, theine from drinking tea might also lead to a certain tolerance.

This means that one cup of tea will soon no longer be enough to provide you with beneficial effects related to tea.

Instead, you might have to get two cups of tea in order to get back those effects.

Thus, due to the theine tolerance that might develop over time, you might drink excessive amounts of tea which may do more harm than good for your health in the long run.

Tea drinking may be problematic during pregnancy

Many people don’t know that, but drinking certain sorts of tea may also be quite harmful to your unborn child.

Unborn children often get in touch with the substances their parents consume.

Therefore, if you drink tea that contains plenty of theine, chances are that your unborn baby will absorb part of it, which can lead to serious health issues for your child.

Mood swings

People who are quite sensitive to the effects of tea might also experience significant swings in their mood.

While their mood might be quite good most of the time, it might also turn quite bad from time to time due to excessive tea consumption.

Hence, if you are quite sensitive to the ingredients in tea, you might consider refraining from drinking tea in order to ensure your mental stability.

Theine withdrawal

Since most people do not think about tea as a drug, they are also not aware of the fact that there might even be some withdrawal symptoms related to tea consumption.

Although those symptoms are usually rather weak, they can still include serious headaches or the development of temporary depression.

Hence, you should not underestimate the effects of excessive tea consumption if you want to avoid those unpleasant effects in the long run.

Tea consumption may lead to nutrient loss

Another downside of tea consumption is that it might contribute to a loss of nutrients in our body.

For instance, if you consume excessive amounts of tea, you will have to go to the toilet quite often.

In turn, plenty of precious nutrients will be lost and if you do not eat in a healthy manner, chances are that you will suffer from vitamin or nutrient loss in the long run.

Excessive amounts of tea are not good for your health

In general, excessive amounts of tea is not good for you at all.

Even though moderate amounts of tea can improve your overall health level, the opposite is true when you drink too much tea.

In such a case, you might suffer from headaches or even from serious problems with your cardiovascular system.

Thus, make sure that you only consume tea in a moderate manner in order to profit from the benefits without causing any harm to your body.

Some people may have a tea intolerance or allergy

In rare cases, you might also suffer from a tea intolerance.

If this is the case, you should not drink tea at all since you might experience all sorts of health problems and you might also suffer from serious skin issues due to your intolerance.

Exploitation of local farmers

Even though the tea industry provides plenty of jobs for the local population, many big tea companies also treat their employees quite poorly and only pay rather low wages for the hard work related to tea production.

Thus, before you buy tea from your local store, make sure that it had been produced under fair labor conditions in order not to support the exploitation of local farmers in the tea production business.

Top 10 Tea Pros & Cons – Summary List

Tea Pros	Tea Cons
Tea can be healthy	Tea will push you less than coffee
Good substitute for coffee	Development of theine tolerance
Tea can calm you down	Can be bad for your sleep
Lower stress levels	Excessive tea consumption may hurt your health
Tea can be refreshing	Swings in mood
Can improve your skin	Withdrawal symptoms
Drinking tea as socializing opportunity	Nutrient loss
Tea drinking as a way of life	Not suitable for pregnant women
Important commodity and trading good	Tea allergies
Ensures the livelihood of many people	Exploitation of tea farmers

Should You Drink Tea?

Drinking tea at moderate levels can be quite beneficial for your health and may also improve your overall quality of life quite a lot.

However, make sure not to drink too much in order to avoid any issues for your health.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea

https://www.britannica.com/topic/tea-beverage

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-worlds-top-10-tea-producing-nations.html

About the author

My name is Andreas and my mission is to educate people of all ages about our environmental problems and how everyone can make a contribution to mitigate these issues.

As I went to university and got my Master’s degree in Economics, I did plenty of research in the field of Development Economics.

After finishing university, I traveled around the world. From this time on, I wanted to make a contribution to ensure a livable future for the next generations in every part of our beautiful planet.

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