Tea or Coffee; which should you savour?

 Wakie Wakie! yes i know is about 8am but you have to believe that some people might still be enjoying their sleep up till this time. Good or bad? who cares! as long as you get the needful done for the day. But when you are done with sleep, how do you reawaken your body and mind? do you drink tea or coffee or just nothing? well, let us know. In this article, i would like us to weigh between the two beverages to find out which is better for you. i see some people when they are pregnant refuse to drink coffee, is this right? another set of people make coffee their companion while reading to help them stay awake and mentality active, does this work? well, you have to find out ...




 


 
First lets distinguish the beverages:

Tea- 
A plant called Camellia sinensis produces the leaves and buds that are commonly known as tea.
Tea is an aromatic beverage commonly prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured leaves of the Camellia sinensis, an evergreen shrub native to Asia. After water, it is the most widely consumed beverage in the world. Tea is mostly produced in subtropical countries including China, Japan, India and Sri Lanka. However, in recent years, new tea-producing countries have emerged, most notably Bangladesh, Vietnam and Kenya.

Okay ladies, did you know there are 5 different types of tea? yap, you heard on this blog, they include:  Black Tea, Oolong Tea, Green Tea, White Tea, Pu-erh Tea.

The modern tea drinking lifestyle  was  popularized by Britain. 

Coffee-
On the other hand, The coffee bean is the seed inside the fruit of the coffee tree, refered to as the 'coffee cherry'. Usually, there are two beans inside the cherry. When there is only one small, round bean, it is called a peaberry. Coffee is a brewed drink with a distinct aroma and flavor, prepared from roasted coffee beans, the seeds found inside "berries" of the Coffea plant. Coffee plants are cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in the equatorial regions of the Americas, Southeast Asia, India and Africa.

Americans made coffee what it is today. 

Unlike tea, there are many many varieties and ways of preparing and drinking coffee. They include,  Cappuccino, Americano, Caffe Latte, Caf au Lait, Caf Mocha (Mochachino),Caramel Macchiato. 

So what are the health benefits of both drinks:

First tea...
1. Drinking tea could help reduce the risk of heart attack. Tea might also help protect against cardiovascular and degenerative diseases.
2. The antioxidants in tea might help protect against a boatload of cancers, including breast, colon, colorectal, skin, lung, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, pancreas, liver, ovarian, prostate and oral cancers. But don’t rely solely on tea to keep a healthy body — tea is not a miracle cure, after all. While more studies than not suggest that tea has cancer-fighting benefits, the current research is mixed.
3. Tea helps fight free radicals. Tea is high in oxygen radical absorbance capacity (“ORAC” to its friends), which is a fancy way of saying that it helps destroy free radicals (which can damage DNA) in the body. While our bodies are designed to fight free radicals on their own, they’re not 100 percent effective — and since damage from these radical oxygen ninjas has been linked to cancer, heart disease and neurological degeneration, we’ll take all the help we can get.
4. Tea can boost exercise endurance. Scientists have found that the catechins (antioxidants) in green tea extract increase the body’s ability to burn fat as fuel, which accounts for improved muscle endurance.

Now over to coffee

 1. Coffee Can Make You Smarter

Coffee doesn't just keep you awake, it may literally make you smarter as well.
The active ingredient in coffee is caffeine, which is a stimulant and the most commonly consumed psychoactive substance in the world.
Caffeine's primary mechanism in the brain is blocking the effects of an inhibitory neurotransmitter called Adenosine.
By blocking the inhibitory effects of Adenosine, caffeine actually increases neuronal firing in the brain and the release of other neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine .
Many controlled trials have examined the effects of caffeine on the brain, demonstrating that caffeine can improve mood, reaction time, memory, vigilance and general cognitive function

2. Coffee Can Help You Burn Fat and Improves Physical Performance
There's a good reason why you will find caffeine in most commercial fat burning supplements.
Caffeine, partly due to its stimulant effect on the central nervous system, both raises metabolism and increases the oxidation of fatty acids . Caffeine can also improve athletic performance by several mechanisms, including by mobilizing fatty acids from the fat tissues .  In two separate meta-analyses, caffeine was found to increase exercise performance by 11-12% on average.

3. Coffee May be Extremely Good For Your Liver
The liver is a remarkable organ that carries out hundreds of vital functions in the body.
It is very vulnerable to modern insults such as excess consumption of alcohol and fructose.
Cirrhosis is the end stage of liver damage caused by diseases like alcoholism and hepatitis, where liver tissue has been largely replaced by scar tissue.
Multiple studies have shown that coffee can lower the risk of cirrhosis by as much as 80%, the strongest effect for those who drank 4 or more cups per da.

4.  Coffee is Loaded With Nutrients and Antioxidants
Coffee isn't just black water.
Many of the nutrients in the coffee beans do make it into the final drink, which actually contains a decent amount of vitamins and minerals.
A cup of coffee contains :
6% of the RDA for Pantothenic Acid (Vitamin B5).
11% of the RDA for Riboflavin (Vitamin B2).
2% of the RDA for Niacin (B3) and Thiamine (B1).
3% of the RDA for Potassium and Manganese.
May not seem like much, but if you drink several cups of coffee per day then this quickly adds up.

5. Coffee May Lower Your Risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's
Not only can coffee make you smarter in the short term, it may also protect your brain in old age.
Alzheimer's disease is the most common neurodegenerative disorder in the world and a leading cause of dementia.In prospective studies, coffee drinkers have up to a 60% lower risk of Alzheimer's and dementia

to be continued....