Does drinking tea help with COVID-19 pandemic?
With the COVID-19 pandemic affecting different parts of the wold, the virus has become the common enemy of mankind, and the world stand in solidarity to combat the pandemic. Some famous academician specialists in respiratory medicine and the leading figures in fighting against SARS, said that before the success of research and development of a vaccine against COVID-19, the best way to prevent COVID-19 is to enhance immunity.
So what are some of the ways to enhance our immunity?
Actually, drinking tea, taking exercise, healthy work and rest, good mentality and so on, are all good ways.
Here we will mainly discuss: What is the significance of drinking tea? Whether drinking tea can exactly prevent virus or not?
Does drinking tea have any effect on novel coronavirus? Tu You-ying, a well-known expert in tea health study and a professor of Tea Science Department of Zhejiang University, said that this question is now a highly-disputed issue, however, for tea as a national drink, the benefits of it are self-evident. Modern researches show that tea, as a healthy drink, is widely believed to have the effect of enhancing immunity, and there are already plenty of arguments for such kind of views. Tea polyphenols, theanine, tea polysaccharides and other nutrients in tea, all have the antioxidant effect and the effects of scavenging free radicals and enhancing immunity.
Furthermore, previous studies, for example, reports from American Academy of Sciences, have found that theanine can enhance immunity and keep away from the attack by SARS, and its effects can greatly contribute to reducing infectivity. Besides, Japanese scientists have also used EGCG to combine with derivatives of fatty acid to form a new compound that can prevent influenza.
There is no evidence that components in tea can treat COVID-19.
Can components in tea treat COVID-19? Professor Tu said that the previous results could not be adopted in the treatment of COVID-19!
The strain of novel coronavirus has just been isolated, and the isolated strain and a series of strains of the original SARS and many other influenza viruses are very different in the gene sequence! Therefore, the previous results are not available in the treatment of COVID-19!
★Hope you can understand the relationship between tea and health objectively and scientifically.
Drinking tea can not treat COVID-19, but can prevent it!
Drinking tea doesn't treat COVID-19, so you might ask: does it mean that drinking tea has no effect on COVID-19? Actually not! Drinking tea might be beneficial to preventing COVID-19.
Professor Tu You-ying put forward two views of her own:
★ Firstly, we know the process of drinking tea can make people produce more dopamine, which in a healthy lifestyle, can let you enhance your immunity.
★ Secondly, tea polyphenols in tea, including EGCG, theanine, tea polysaccharides and flavonoids, can help to enhance the body's immunocompetence, scavenge free radicals, resist oxidation and remove inflammation. Therefore drinking tea can not treat COVID-19, but can achieve a certain preventive effect!
Hence we believe Green Tea, would be a good choice for us, as it has the highest content of tea polyphenols among the the six major tea categories, such as Chinese Organic Dragon well Loose Leaf Hangzhou (Longjing/Lung Ching) Green Tea First Flush, Taiping Houkui (Peaceful Monkey King) Chinese Loose Leaf Green Tea, China Sichuan Meng Ding Gan Lu (Sweet Dew) Chinese Green Tea and Premium Lu an Gua Pian (Melon Seed) Chinese loose leaf Green Tea.
Suggestion about tea drinking in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic: Drink tea every day!
With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, in any case, I hope that all of you drink tea every day and drink tea scientifically, to reach certain tea quantity and concentration, which will be more effective. And apart from drinking tea, everyone of us should exercise more to enhance our immunity, which is also believed to be beneficial to winning the war against the pandemic to a certain degree.
Let’s just wait for tomorrow.
Absolutely, things will go well as what we look forward to.