The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine says, “The stomach is a sea of food and water that nourishes all the major organs. When the various kinds of food enter the mouth, they are stored up in the stomach and are transformed to nourish the Qi of all the other organs. Since the nutrients of all the organs comes from the stomach, keeping the stomach in healthy balance is very important.”
We already know that the stomach belongs to the Earth element, and that according to Five Elements theory, the Fire element supports the Earth element. So, Fire element teas (like Ancient Artisan Yunnan Black Tea) are almost always good for most people. Also, drinking Earth element teas (like Ancient Artisan Phoenix Fermented Looseleaf Puer Tea or yellow tea) nourishes Earth element organs, like the stomach, and is a good way to protect them.
No matter who you are, which organs you feel the need to heal or supply with energy, don’t forget: everything starts with the stomach. Keeping the stomach in healthy balance is always good for the rest of your body.
One certain herbal tea has particularly strong health benefits for the entire body. Wild schizandra, in Chinese, is "five flavor berry." It gets its name from the fact that it contains all the five flavors of traditional Chinese medicine, which are sour, sweet, salty, bitter, and pungent. It is a deciduous, woody vine native to the forests of Northeast China and the Russian Far East. In traditional Chinese medicine, it is conventionally believed to possess the ability to protect the five internal organs – heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys. Thus, it can be used for our stomach, too.
So based on this theory, Fire element teas, like black tea or Wild Rock Oolong, Earth element teas like fermented puer, and herbal teas like wild schizandra can be drunk more often than other types of teas.
But even though some teas like Puer tea or Ancient Artisan Yunnan Black Tea can be suitable for most people to drink the whole year round, we still need to pay attention to our tea consumption.
Scientist have already done research indicating that if a person drinks more than six grams of dry tea leaves’ worth of tea per day, these excessive amounts can cause troublesome side effects including headaches, nervousness, sleeplessness, irritability, irregular heartbeat, heartburn, dizziness, and confusion.
The tea plant (camellia senses) includes three ingredients of note: oxalic acid, caffeine, and tannic acid.
If we drink too much tea each day, the oxalic acid in the tea could turn into oxalates, which are salt crystals that can irritate human tissue and can contribute to the formation of kidney and bladder stones. This is especially a concern for those who have kidney or bladder problems or those with an inability to properly absorb fat.
Pregnant women should avoid excessive caffeine to prevent the baby being born underweight, so pregnant women drinking little or no tea is the best choice.
For those with a gastric ulcer, we recommend you don’t drink any tea. Tea contains tannic acid, which can irritate preexisting problems in the stomach.
The healthiest quantity of tea to drink is no more than six grams of dry tea leaves per day.
The traditional gongfu cha (Kungfu tea) brewing style is highly beneficial for reducing oxalic acid, caffeine, and tannic acid. In traditional Chinese gongfu cha(Kungfu tea) brewing, you not only use different water brewing methods to get health benefits, but you also brew tea in a slower manner, allowing people to drink slower and in smaller quantities. This manner of drinking tea prevents imbibing excessive caffeine, oxalic acid, and tannic acid. Also, it allows the body to absorb more nutrients from the tea.
Another important thing is, usually when brewing tea, we need hot water so that we can get the perfect taste and aroma from the tea. But we shouldn’t drink tea when it’s too hot. After conducting research into the biochemistry of tea, scientists have confirmed that: “Many people like to drink hot tea. We’ve learned that drinking tea at temperatures greater than 80 ℃ will cause the tea’s tannic to burn the esophagus, will continue to stimulate the esophageal wall’s epithelial cells, and will promote its mutation. After a large number of mutant cells proliferate, they can evolve into tumor tissues, causing people to suffer from gastrointestinal cancer. Therefore, it’s best to cool the tea to below 70 ℃ before drinking.”
A great advantage of using the gongfu cha (Kungfu tea) style to brew tea is that we can always use a high water temperature to bring out the aroma and flavor when brewing tea, but using the different water handling methods during gongfu cha (Kungfu tea) brewing can easily cool the water temperature down to 35-40 ℃, which is the perfect temperature for healthy tea drinking.
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