A spot of tea does your heart a ton of good
Like many of you, I grew up in a home where coffee was the breakfast beverage of choice. Mom and Dad usually drank two cups before it was time for him to go to work. Not a drop more until the next morning.
When I was about five, I asked if I could have some coffee and was told it would make me look old and wrinkly like a grandma. I asked again when I was six or seven. One of my older cousins said drinking coffee would make me grow a beard!
I persisted and the next year, I asked again for coffee, and this time, my mom heated some milk, filled a mug half full with milk and splashed just a couple of teaspoons of coffee in the mix. She then added some sugar and I took a sip. Not bad, but at that age, hot chocolate was still my first choice.
My Great Aunt Margaret taught me to drink tea -- from how to hold a teacup to how to serve tea. Aunt Margaret always had an embroidered luncheon cloth on the table with matching embroidered cloth napkins. She used a silver tea service, which she kept on an ornat sideboard.
Best of all, she served sugar cubes requiring small silver tongs rather than loose sugar in her sugar bowl. She told me the British referred to them as “sugar lumps” or simply “lumps.”
When you had tea with Aunt Margaret, there was always a matching saucer with your teacup, and there was always cream in the silver pitcher although she cautioned that too much cream would not only hide the taste of the tea, but cool it too fast to enjoy.
Every time I make tea, I think of Aunt Margaret and our tea parties, complete with British tea biscuits, served on a small silver plate. When I visited her, I made believe we were in England rather than Dallas and I was the guest of the Queen.
Because of those childhood experiences, I still enjoy a cup of tea during the day, and have learned to vary my collection of teas. Early in married life, I occasionally treated myself to a tin of Constant Comment, one of the only spiced teas I could find at the grocery store.
With a little research, I found Constant Comment was so named because so many people constantly commented on how good it was. I also learned it was introduced in 1945 to New Englanders by Bigelow Tea Company and created by Company founder Ruth Campbell Bigelow in her kitchen. She based the tea on an old colonial recipe that was used to make orange and spice tea in stone containers.
But here’s the big news! Scientists have found how tea helps lower blood pressure, perhaps leading to new types of blood pressure medications.
Researchers recently found that certain compounds in both black and green tea help relax blood vessels by activating ion channel proteins in the walls of blood vessels. These compounds are two catechin-type flavonoids that single out a specific type of ion channel protein called KCNQ5, which is found in the smooth muscle lining our blood vessels.
Previous research suggested that tea catechins activated KCNQ5, and a new University of California, Irvine (UCI), study confirms that. KCNQ5 is a protein.
Here’s a fact that shocked me: People, worldwide, drink about 2 billion cups of tea each day. And tea is second only to water in terms of the volume consumed globally. Black tea is often mixed with milk, and in laboratory tests, the UCI researchers found the addition of milk to black tea prevented the beneficial KCNQ5- activating effects of tea.
“However, we don't believe this means one needs to avoid milk when drinking tea to take advantage of the beneficial properties of tea. We are confident that the environment in the human stomach will separate the catechins from the proteins and other molecules in milk that would otherwise block catechins' beneficial effects," researchers said, and previous studies have shown that even when milk is added, tea retains its blood pressure-lowering benefits.
The new study also found that warming green tea to 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) changes its chemical composition in a way that makes it more effective at activating KCNQ5.
"Regardless of whether tea is consumed iced or hot, this temperature is achieved after tea is drunk, as human body temperature is about 37 degrees Celsius," the study found.
Thus, simply by drinking tea we activate its beneficial, antihypertensive properties.
I always believed my Great Aunt Margaret was one of the smartest women I ever knew. Thank you, Auntie M, for taking time for tea parties all those years ago.