How many cups of tea a day should you drink?
This question tends to pop up both on our blog and in our stores. Clearly health concerns are driving this question and people are really asking: how much tea should I drink to get the most health benefits. There is no real downside to drinking “too much” tea, unless you’re only drinking caffeinated teas (like black teas). Outside of the caffeine, teas are beneficial to your health and can be consumed all day.
But it seems you want to know the minimum amount of tea you should drink a day. And the answer to that is somewhere in the 4-9 cups a day range, depending on what your goals are. A recent study showed that three cups of tea a day reduces the risk of a heart attack, but “Dr. Ruxton found that drinking up to eight cups a day would deliver optimium benefits from polyphenols without affecting sleep quality.” I’m assuming she means that more than eight cups of caffeinated tea would affect your sleep quality, since caffeine-free teas like herbal teas are not likely to affect your quality of sleep. That study suggested that four cups of tea a day was better than drinking four cups of water.
A different study on the benefits of tea in helping sleep apnea suggested a few more cups:
According to lead study author David Gozal of the University of Louisville, the drop in oxygen levels and inflammation associated with apnea can lead to the death of brain cells over time. He said the study showed that drinking six to 10 cups of green tea a day can help combat this decline.
This was specifically looking at green tea, which has a lower amount of caffeine than black tea, so the type of tea you drink does impact the number of cups. And for bone density in women, it is suggested to drink at least four cups a day:
My study also found emerging evidence that older women – those most at risk of brittle bones – had significant increases in bone density if they drank more than four cups of tea a day.
A study at Egypt’s Alexandria Institute says at least 2-3 cups a day but recommends more:
How much green tea should you drink? Dr. Zuo Feng Zhang, a cancer epidemiology researcher at UCLA, recommends two to three cups a day (that’s teacups, not mugs), though his research related to stomach cancer shows that four to five cups can reduce disease susceptibility even more.
And for weight loss and dieting, this study recommends seven cups a day. So we seem to be in the 4-8 cups a day range across the board, but there is one exception. If you are trying to get pregnant, consider drinking only 2-3 cups a day. Why? Drinking tea does reduce absorption of folic acid, which is particularly important during pregancy. This isn’t a big issue unless you drink a lot of tea daily. Often your doctor will recommend a folic acid substitute to help.
One point to remember: all of the studies continually say that tea is a very healthy beverage. And they all recommend drinking tea daily to help prevent health problems from sleep apnea to cancer to heart disease. So whatever you do, drink tea!
[...] most people drink a few cups a day of green tea at most. And, as we recently noted, most studies recommend around 8-10 cups of tea a day, which should include some white and herbal teas (both have very little fluoride). This would be [...]