Today’s guest post and recipe are offered up by Simon Cheng, founder & CEO of Pique – Tea Crystals. I connected with Simon and his team about a year ago and have been a fan of their tea products since. In fact, it’s what you’ll find in my kitchen cabinets these days (the basic English Breakfast is what I drink most often). The following is an excerpt from Pique Tea’s Definitive Guide to Tea ebook, which I highly recommend. You can download the full version HERE. Enjoy!
Tea has now become one of the most studied superfoods in the world, with mounting evidence for a seemingly unending number of health benefits. Importantly, these health benefits have been observed in large numbers of people (entire populations) who have consumed tea for long periods (decades).
Contrast this with the studies on most other superfoods, which typically rely on test tube or animal studies, or which only test on tiny samples of people conducted for short periods of time. Tea truly is the standout superfood, with decades of results documenting its benefits. The countries responsible for the largest consumption of tea include Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. These same countries consistently rank amongst the highest in the world for life expectancy according to the World Bank, WHO and Japan Ministry of Health. What’s amazing is that these countries score so well in life expectancy—despite the existence of numerous adverse factors like environmental pollution, population density, high occupational stress and lack of exercise.
Even with these typically life-shortening factors, women in Hong Kong live to an average age of 87 and men live to an average age of 81! And in Japan, where 20% of the population smoke daily and which has the highest rate of stress-related suicide of any developed country, women also live to 87 and men to 81!
The remarkable health benefits of tea can be attributed to a trifecta of active ingredients:
• polyphenols (antioxidants)
• amino acids
• caffeine
While each of these compounds carries unique benefits, it is the combination of all three working together that creates a powerful kind of plant medicine. To make your cup of tea even more beneficial, try adding collagen peptides.
Tea happens to be an excellent way to get your collagen supplementation for the day. If you’re not quite familiar with the benefits of collagen peptides, here is what you can expect:
Collagen is critical for keeping your joints and connective tissue healthy. Whether you’re an athlete wanting to recover faster from tough workouts or just someone looking to ease joint stiffness and pain, supplementing with collagen can help! One study showed that a diet higher in collagen makes the Achilles’ tendon in rats stronger and less likely to tear. Another study on humans found that supplementing with collagen reduced joint pain in athletes.
A lot of people find that having a cup of herbal tea with collagen in the evening helps them sleep very deeply. While tea alone can help your quality of sleep, collagen supplementation seems to have added and proven sleep benefits. Several studies show that taking collagen can not only improve the quality of your sleep, but also make you more awake after any period of sleep restriction. Pretty impressive!
If you’re over the age of, say, 30-35, you’ve probably looked at the face of a teenager and thought, “why can’t I have that kind of collagen anymore!” Collagen is responsible for the elastic, smooth, healthy and youthful appearance of skin, and we start slowly losing it in our twenties. Now, we happen to be fans of getting older and wiser, but if you want to help your skin retain elasticity and glow, collagen peptides can help. Studies show that taking daily collagen supplements can repair skin’s elasticity and reduce wrinkling. Seems worth a shot, right?
Anytime you have a wound, your body relies on collagen to be able to make new tissue to heal that wound. So if you have a need for healing, supplementing with collagen could be a good idea. Some medical professionals are even using collagen directly in wound dressing to speed up the healing process. Collagen has also been shown to increase the healing progress of patients recovering from ulcers.
I’m going to let you in on the biggest, most untapped and fundamental secret about tea. Are you ready? The key to unlocking the benefits of tea is quantity. We can’t repeat this enough times. (but we’ll try).
Quantity, Quantity, Quantity.
Here’s one delicious tea recipe to try:
Ingredients:
Instructions:
Heat water on stove, add to blender with remaining ingredients and blend until smooth. Garnish with rose petals and serve immediately.
Get more tea recipes, read more about the specific benefits of each type of tea, and learn how much tea you should drink to reap the health rewards in The Definitive Guide to Tea ebook. My team and I have partnered with the good folks at Pique Tea for an offer just for Mark’s Daily Apple readers: Get $5 off Primal Kitchen Collagen Peptides and one free carton of Pique Tea when you sign up to receive the ebook.
Simon Cheng is founder & CEO of Pique – Tea Crystals, the only tea designed for benefits like gut health, reduced stress and sustained energy made via “Cold Brew Crystallization.” Simon is a certified Qigong Meditation expert, the youngest member of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Nutrition Roundtable and graduate of Harvard and Stanford University.
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