I’ve always been a big fan of green tea. Green tea actually contains less caffeine than coffee, so it’s a great way to perk up during a study session or mid-afternoon when you might lose focus and don’t fancy drinking coffee.
I also love that green tea has a raft of health benefits. According to WebMD, it’s been linked to lower cholesterol, and it’s been found that ‘green tea helped prevent a range of heart-related issues.’ Green tea comes from the leaves of the camellia sinners plant, and it originated in China. So unlike herbal teas, it does contain caffeine which is why people believe that drinking it will dehydrate them, but is that true?
It’s recommended that the average person drinks between 6 and 8 glasses of water per day. You can actually count green tea towards this, but you’ll still need to drink water. You can’t just drink green tea all day and expect to say hydrated.
Caffeinated beverages have a reputation for being diuretics. Diuretics make people pee more often because caffeine encourages the body to flush out water. This is why people think it’s dehydrating. If you’re drinking green tea and then peeing it out, it’s understandable that some people believe you are at risk of dehydrating. But that’s not entirely true. According to the Healthline website, even though tea increases urine production, you don’t lose more water than you initially consumed.
If you’re concerned about the amount of caffeine in green tea, you can always try decaffeinated green tea. Although, it’s worth noting that some of the antioxidants will be destroyed while removing the caffeine, so you won’t be getting the full benefit of its beneficial properties.
And it’s hard to predict the levels of caffeine in tea because it depends on how the leaf has been picked and how long the leaves have been steeped. Because of this, Twinings writes that there’s anything between 16 and 19 milligrams of caffeine in a gram of tea. The web article notes that ‘green tea is just as hydrating as non-caffeinated drinks’.
Which I was relieved to hear.
Green tea offers some valuable health benefits and is a popular staple in China and abroad. Whilst it’s always worth keeping an eye on your caffeine intake, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t enjoy green tea in the knowledge that it isn’t dehydrating.