When next you’ve got the chance to drink black tea – Forget the 5,000 years of consumption in China and think instead about the multiple health benefits that Black Tea may bring to your body, which now include reduced blood sugar levels.

You’ve probably heard about how black tea improves immunity and heart health, now studies appearing in the June 30, 2009 issue of the book of Food Science, adds diabetes treatment to the list of illnesses where a cup of dark tea ( without milk or sugar ) might be just what you need.

The up to date studies out of Tianjin school in China discovered that black tea contains a compound that works just like oral medications Precose and Glyset – pharmaceuticals now used to control blood sugar levels for patients with type 2 diabetes.

The natural polysaccharide compound in black tea is at levels greater than in either green or oolong tea.

Haixia Chen and colleagues report the polysaccharides discovered in black tea prohibit the activity of an enzyme known as alpha-glucosidase that transforms starches to sugar.

This is the way the prescribed drugs work also.

Research has shown for a while that polysaccharides might be of value to those with diabetes because they help stop the assimilation of sugar. According to the researchers, the black variety of tea was also discovered to possess the best scavenging effect on free radicals, those stressful compounds believed by many to be concerned in the development of cancer and other sicknesses.

So are you able to drink black tea in the place of an oral diabetic medication?

No – Never make a change like this in your treatment without chatting with your own doctor.

Chen’s team cannot say for certain that just drinking the tea would be enough . The research used chemical extraction systems, not the brewing as you could at home, to get the polysaccharides from the teas they’d acquired at local marketplaces.

standard teas come from exactly the same plant. It’s actually the quantity of processing that makes the difference in the color, the black having oxidized ( interacted with oxygen till the leaves darkened ) as it goes through all of the steps in the tea creation processes. Traditional processing of the black variety is not anything like fermenting, there’s no yeast involved, just the tea leaves and oxygen.

It’s important to grasp that thanks to the way black tea is manufactured, it does have a far higher caffeine content than the other teas – green, white or oolong. One cup of black tea has about 50 mg of caffeine when compared to coffee, that has from sixty five to 175 mg of caffeine per cup.

In fact, in many parts of the planet tea, not coffee is utilized as the wake-me-up at the beginning of the day.

You can buy teas at most grocery stores, or try the organic types from online ( or local ) natural health food stores.

Black varieties can be packaged as a single tea or as part of a mix – you will be amazed at the numerous decisions. You’ll be wanting to try several brands to find the flavour and depth of color you like best, and be sure to brew the leaves lose in a pleasant, pot-bellied teapot so they can unfurl all the way to form a drink that is’s powerful and delicious, and likely good for you too!

The black tea benefits are certainly impressive, and with this research we could be close to another breakthrough for regulating blood sugar levels.

Next – just head on over to the Daily Health Bulletin for more information on how to lower blood sugar, plus for a limited time get 5 free fantastic health reports. Click here for more details on how to lower blood sugar.