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Drink tea to get rid of stress
05/Oct/2006: A new study conducted by researchers at University College, London, has found that tea could reduce the levels of cortisol, a corticosteroid hormone produced in the body in response to stress. People who drank tea were able to de-stress quickly, when compared to those who drank other drinks or a fake tea substitute.
Researchers involved in this study divided 75 male participants (tea drinkers) in to two groups and observed them for a period of six weeks. All participants gave up other drinks like coffee, caffeinated drinks etc. during the study period. One group was given a fruit-flavored caffeinated tea mixture, which contained the constituents of an average cup of black tea.
The other group was given a caffeinated placebo, which tasted like tea but lacked actual tea ingredients. The drinks given to both the groups were tea-colored, but were masked of elements such as smell, taste and familiarity of the brew, to eliminate any comforting effects that a person gets while drinking a cup of tea.
Both the teams were subjected to tough tasks during the six-week period and their blood pressure, cortisol, blood platelet and self-rated levels of stress, were continuously monitored. In one such task, the participants were exposed to three stressful situations – threat to employment, a shop-lifting acquisition and an incident in a nursing home – where they had to argue their case in front of a camera. All these tasks triggered the blood pressure, pulse rate and subjective stress ratings in both the groups.
The study found that cortisol level in the body of the tea-drinking group had dropped by an average of 47%, 50 minutes after these tasks, while in the case of fake tea group the average drop in cortisol levels was only 27%.
Professor Andrew Steptoe, of the department of epidemiology and public health at the University College, London, said that many people believe that drinking a cup of tea can help them to relax after the stresses of their daily life, since drinking tea has traditionally been associated with stress relief. He added that this was one of the first studies in which the participants never knew whether they were drinking real or fake tea.
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