Tea for me

Most of my blogger bios have mentioned tea. And why not? Tea is great, it calms and perks you at once. It’s liquid magic.

Imagine if we all sat down daily, took a calm moment to breathe and brew leaves, then just drank together. There would be no war. You know what there would be instead? Amazing skin.

This blog has been a long time coming. I’ve been eager to tell you, and now it’s time.

Tea and Your Skin

You probably already drink tea. The question is which, and what benefits is it giving your skin? There are many answers, all uncovering what tea really is – the world’s oldest medicine.

Green and white tea

Recently we blogged about antioxidants and where they appear – cabbage, superfoods, some of SkinB5’s products such as our Acne Control Extra Strength Tablets. The more delicate and unfermented a tea is, the more antioxidants it contains. Black tea is totally fermented, green isn’t at all. The antioxidants in tea are called polyphenols, and they reduce UV. Yes, they make you less sunburnt – and less inflamed. All this helps prevent cancer and acne. Also it works as a mouthwash.

Oolong

This Chinese tea is more fermented than green and less fermented than black. It’s smoky, dark and handsome. The oolong anti-inflammatories help eczema and other skin problems such as dermatitis. It’s especially famous for helping weight loss. If language were a perfect thing, we would say ‘oolong’ instead of ‘dark green’.

Black tea

Your grandma’s tea is more controversial. Black tea has the highest amount of caffeine, the thing that everyone around you is addicted to. While it has many benefits, caffeine can dry the skin and trigger acne. Luckily, black tea still doesn’t have much caffeine, it just has way more than white tea. Its antioxidants and magnesium help weight loss, but it may increase your risk of arthritis. But it decreases the risk of ovarian cancer. See how this starts arguments?

It’s best to have black tea in moderation, more than one cup and less than four. Drink plenty of water too.

Chai

Spiced tea gets you high. If you have two cups of this, you’ll go mellow and calm. This is because chai spices are all calmatives. They also aid circulation, which makes your skin glow. The spices bolster tea’s fight against cancer, weight gain and inflammation. Every spice has benefits – these are just the ones they have in common. Cinnamon will repair your skin. Fennel seed makes it less sensitive.

Yerba Maté

This rising star in the tea world is native to South America and has many of the supplements in our products, from our Acne Control Extra Strength Tablets to our Five Minute Skin Purifying Mask – B vitamins, zinc, iron and a wealth of others. Sometimes nature really gets it right.

Rooibos

A South African bush that’s all flavour and no caffeine. It’s nutty, sweet and life-changingly good with vanilla. Treating inflammation, especially acne, is the Rooibos way. Its unique flavonoids keep your skin clear – flavonoids are one part of what makes fruit and vegetables so healthy.

Special mention to chamomile tea for easing inflammation. Remember, tea is soothing, and calm is great for your skin. If you give someone tea after a stressful event, their anxiety drops by about a quarter.

Tea is the second most consumed drink in the world behind beer, which by contrast drains the nice fluids in your skin and leaves you with not much. Also , eer tastes like pub floor. It kind of feels like tea drinkers have won this one.

There’s a real magic in making tea. You take the leaves and let them sit, and it forces you to be calm. It summons the patience out of you. Legend has it that a Chinese king discovered tea when some leaves fell into the water he was drinking – he just found it, like penicillin or manna from Heaven. In India there’s a similar story, but with an Indian king. Everyone wants credit because it’s tea, of course they do.

Peter Matthews is a blogger, journalist and caffeine wizard living in Melbourne. When not thinking about tea, he’s drinking it. He enjoys lifting weights to audiobooks.