Black Tea may lower blood sugar

 A good customer came in to the shop and we were discussing teas and she said that black tea made her feel sick. We talked a little more and then I went online to see if I could find a potential reason and found the article and the link below. It makes a lot of sense from other complaints I have received regarding black teas. Usually these are people drinking their black tea black with no sugar or milk and often on an empty stomach.

Wanted to share the information in case this has been your experience. Always learning more about tea.

 

 

Black Tea May Lower Blood Sugar

Substance in Black Tea Mimics Diabetes Drugs

By Daniel J. DeNoon
WebMD Health News

Reviewed by Brunilda Nazario, MD

WebMD News Archive
July 30, 2009 -- Black tea contains a substance that mimics type 2 diabetes drugs Precose and Glyset.
Black tea contains more of the substance, a polysaccharide compound, than either green or oolong tea, report Haixia Chen and colleagues of Tianjin University, China.
Coarse tea has been used as a diabetes treatment in China and Japan. It's known that tea polysaccharides reduce blood sugar.
Now Chen and colleagues show that tea polysaccharides inhibit an enzyme called alpha-glucosidase, which turns starch into glucose. The diabetes drugs Precose and Glyset work by inhibiting this enzyme.
"Many efforts have been made to search for effective glucose inhibitors from natural materials," Chen says in a news release. "There is a potential for exploitation of black tea polysaccharide in managing diabetes."
It's not clear whether simply drinking black tea would help. Chen's team used chemical extraction methods -- not simple brewing -- to derive the polysaccharides from tea they purchased at local markets.
Chen and colleagues report their findings in the current issue of the Journal of Food Science.
http://www.webmd.com/diabetes/news/20090730/black-tea-may-lower-blood-sugar