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In all events worldwide — be it an informal get-together with old friends, a black-tie affair with the biggest business tycoons or just a lazy afternoon with the next-door neighbour — tea and coffee are two omnipresent drinks. Till a short while back, most people, including academicians or otherwise, viewed these two drinks in a purely unscientific manner. However, in recent years the benefits and ills of both beverages have been researched intensively and many studies conclude that both can be counted as super-foods. Before elaborating
further, one must accept that the choice of drinks is a personal one.
However, with escalating stress levels and in the light of certain
increasingly prevalentdiseases, one cannot help but contemplate on
whether the health-related aspects of these beverages should make a
difference to an individual’s choice of drink.
Both tea and coffee are caffeinated drinks, and this ingredient plays an important role in these drinks’ impact on the human health. The caffeine content in both tea and coffee, increases body pressure and can increase anxiety. However, these drinks have many positive health benefits too. Coffee: It magnifies the impact of painkillers and plays an important role in acting as a stimulant for the central nervous system. In this respect, the effects of coffee, whether good or bad, are much more emphatic as it has a much higher content of caffeine. Coffee can prevent liver cirrhosis and liver cancer. However, 19 of the various chemicals present in roasted coffee (of which there are more than a thousand), have been identified as carcinogens. It reduces the danger of contracting gout that most men over the age of 40 face. It also improves the short-term recall memory of the aged besides improving reactions. Drinking coffee reduces the risk of type-2 diabetes. It also boosts athletic performance when taken in small doses. Coffee-drinkers have a reduced risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease or having cardiac problems. However, coffee mitigates the flow of blood to the heart. It can help ease asthma attacks. Compared to tea, it has a higher chance of preventing the drinker from getting dementia. But excess coffee drinking can also be harmful. Coffee, if had more than eight cups a day, can increase the chances of stillbirths. Coffee also discolours teeth. Coffee was originally sold in pharmacies in Finland in the 18th century as a treatment for depression. It is also linked to an improved memory recall. The general consensus in the medical community is that moderate and regular coffee drinking in healthy individuals is either essentially benign or mildly beneficial. Tea: The caffeine in tea is known to boost the concentration of sufferers of adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and improve their self-confidence. The constituents of tea influence the bodily risk of cancer. If a drinker consumes three to four cups of tea a day, then his/her chances of suffering cardiac arrest decrease. Men, who have more than 10 cups in one day, are not as prone to developing liver problems. It protects the body from heart diseases. Green tea has been proven to reduce the possibility of oesophageal cancer in women by almost 60 per cent, alongside the protection that it offers against lung cancer. However, tea can also increase the risk of cancer as in the case of oesophageal cancer, whose probability is magnified if the tea is too hot. So preferably have a cooler tea. Also, when tea contains milk, its various benefits that one obtains against cancer are lost. Drinking tea, among other things, helps prevent type-1 diabetes. It also contains chlorides as well as fluorides that are good for the teeth. In fact, drinking four cups of black tea a day for six weeks was found to lower levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. Green tea can also reduce neurological damage due to oxidation which in turn prevents the Alzheimer’s and the Parkinson’s disease. The anti-oxidants in tea prevent clogging of arteries and reduce the risk of stroke. Possibly the most healthy variety of tea is white tea. It has a high level of anti-oxidants, which are useful anti-ageing material, reducing the possibility of inflammation and heart disease. Tea also has properties that are thermogenic in nature, promoting the oxidation of fats and preventing the drinker from becoming obese as it is an obstacle in the growth of new fat cells. In India, tea or chai is more popular, while in south India, coffee is the popular choice. It is, however, difficult to be objective in a ‘tea vs. coffee’ debate, as the natural tendency is to be biased towards our preferred drinks. However, when seen holistically, tea is a better beverage to have health-wise, having far more positive benefits, and not nearly as many negative effects. Nowadays, a vast variety of flavours of green tea are available. Be it tulsi (basil), lime and lemon, orange spice, or a blackcurrant one, these flavoured tea bags add some fun to our regular tea cups. A tulsi-flavoured tea, especially if it is organic, is really good for health. However, both drinks have their advantages, when had in moderation. Remember, even something good, when had in excess, can be bad. — The writer is Mumbai-based obesity, lifestyle & disease consultant. She has a website: www.nainisetalvad.com.
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Naini Setalvad
Contrary to
popular beliefs, a study has uncovered that increasing
consumption of violent video games and movies is not linked to
rise in societal violence. The study found violent video game
consumption was strongly correlated with decline in youth
violence. The study pointed out that blaming consumption of
violent video games and movies for real-world violence amounts
to barking up the wrong tree. "There is a risk that
identifying the wrong problem, such as media violence, may
distract society from more pressing concerns such as poverty,
education and vocational disparities and mental health,"
said researcher Christopher Ferguson, Stetson University,
Florida, USA. He conducted two studies that raised the question
if whether the incidence of violence in media correlates with
actual violence rates in society. The first study looked at
movie violence and homicide rates between 1920 and 2005. The
second study looked at videogame violence consumption and its
relationship to youth violence rates from 1996-2011. He found
that societal consumption of media violence is not predictive of
increased violence rates in society. The study appeared in the Journal
of Communication.
New York: In the early stages of brain growth, a disturbance like a premature birth could affect its neuro-circuitry, leading to a higher risk of neurological disorders, says a new research. Premature babies are at higher risk of disorders, which include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder. “For the first time, we have demonstrated the feasibility of using measurements of these abnormalities in the brain of pre-term newborns as potential indicators of risk for future cognitive and behavioural problems,” said Natasha Lepore, Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles. Using three-dimensional, magnetic resonance imaging, experts analyzed the structure and neural circuitry of two specific areas of the brain in 17 pre-term and 19 term-born babies: the thalamus — the brain’s relay station, critical to sending and receiving sensory information — and the putamen, involved in a number of different processes, most notably regulation of movement and learning. “The ability to identify structural signs of neuro-developmental disease shortly after birth in premature infants could allow for early interventions, increasing the child’s social and learning behaviours as they age,” said Lepore. The study was published in the journal Brain Structure and Function.