Tea or Coffee? How much does it matter? And how does exercise fit in with it?
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Picture those old school 1920s un-fit looking, tough guys. If they were around today they would have their sleeves up, drinking a coffee, while smoking and at the same time lifting a dumb bell, while they are in the office. That image has changed, but have all our habits?
A few mornings ago, I went to make my morning tea and I could not find any tea bags. It was early morning and my wife was still asleep and obviously I was not privy to where the new tea had been placed. We do not have coffee in the kitchen anymore, we just don’t drink it.
So, I there I am with this kettle of boiled water in front of me. What do I do? I pour the water into my mug, I put some cold water from the filter water in it, and there you go, I had hot water. It is almost entirely the habit of drinking a hot brew in the morning.
I was an almost exclusive coffee drinker for many years. It was just habit. Throughout my 20s I probably had a coffee every morning in the office with particularly stressful periods of work, and perhaps study, requiring 3 or 4 cups a day. I do recall having up to 8 cups of coffee on one occasion and that spun me out. Mind you that was in my early 20s when I got spun out quite easily.
There are many benefits of coffee and these are well advocated by the “pro-coffee” crowd as discussed in?veryhealthy.life?that coffee improves circulation, improves hair growth, it is good for the heart, aids sleep apnea, improves lung activity, and it is even great for the skin. The same article also asserts that coffee aids mental sharpness.
The same article also notes qualifications that coffee should be drank in moderation and where you have underlying health conditions coffee may not be the best option. There is an entire industry built around coffee and for many places in the world, coffee is a cultural icon in our lives. And just like any industry, there are advocates who will champion coffee until the last bit of coffee has been squeezed out of every bean.
I would not go so far as to draw parallels with alcohol or smoking, but there is a tone of “if you have it in moderation, then anything is okay” and I am not suggesting that coffee is in anyway the same as alcohol or smoking, but the idea is the same. Nobody says have celery in moderation.
Two bananas a day won’t have a negative effect on our health, ever. Two cups of coffee won’t have a noticeable negative effect either, not on their own. But with other health problems, such as weight gain, lack of physical fitness, heart, blood pressure and liver problems, suddenly even one cup of coffee starts to have a cascading and cumulative effect.
The negatives of coffee are well documented, coffee is effectively a drug. It alters our bodies' chemical states. The long-term impacts of even mild coffee drinking can include hypertension, disrupted sleep, and disrupted blood sugar levels, to name the most critical.
And why are these important? Look back at the positive benefits, even those positives are really health aspects that can be improved by other activities: improved cognition, improved ling capacity, improved joint function – not taking what is effectively a drug – How about this… just exercise.
Almost every benefit of coffee – especially a morning coffee – can be achieved from smashing out a few 50 x reps of sit-ups and 30 x reps of push-ups. The rush of adrenaline, the increased awareness, sharpness, all of these come from exercise. Coffee should not be a necessity, it should be a luxury. But it is so well embedded culturally, just like steaks and burgers are, that it is and will continue to be hard to dislodge from our habitual proclivities.
Now when it comes to tea, we often gauge it in relative terms. It is the shy little sister to the big bad older brother coffee. I never drank tea in my younger years. Only in my early 30s did I start to drink black tea, and then now evolved to herbal tea.?
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Tea makes many of the positive claims that coffee does, only a lesser scale. Likewise, its suggested negative effects also stem from the similar “take it in moderation” mantra that coffee supporters advocate.
?The Tea Lobby also includes?benefits such as:
Those are pretty broad claims and interestingly in regards to the heart the evidentiary support came from:
“Recent research including animal studies shows that tea drinking may significantly lower the risk for serious heart disease including heart attack and blood clots...”
Source: Tea Party PBS Kids
Won’t even go there. I just picture some pigs sitting around a table drinking tea. It does make you wonder that people are willing to test substances on animals just to prove a point about the positive impacts of their product. Isn’t there enough evidence in the health conditions of people who are regular consumers? I am not admonishing tea for the sake of it, nor the people who support it. I am just trying to understand where the best choices are.
On the topic of best choices, tea or coffee, the health considerations are less of a factor for most people. I mean, I loved coffee all through my 20s, I still do. I just don’t drink it unless I am out at a café or restaurant, and it really is a novelty. People like to drink coffee, it is as much a habit as a statement. I am sitting in starbucks (or maybe not starbucks) and I am in a cafe, either contemplating the world, or meeting with friends and discussing the world, or our lives. You do it with a coffee, or if you are slightly less cool, with a coffee.
I just know coffee was a habit for me. And to an increasing extent, tea is a habit for me now. I just need exercise to become more of a habit, then I will really be doing my health a favour. I know exercise and smoothies just feel better. Yet I do not always do that. Is that habit or laziness, or something else? I do not know.
For me, more importantly I got into the habit of more exercise, fruit and vegetable smoothies to substitute or supplement herbal tea. And I feel much better. I feel lighter. I feel more energetic, and I sleep better. I am still discovering new ideas and still learning.
An original version of this appeared in the Frank with Frank newsletter. A version of this article appears in www.nuovelife.com co-written and edited by Snezhana Batova.