ADVERTISEMENT

Drink this to stop a drastic blood sugar spike

But choosing the other morning beverage—tea, that is—could help your health in a surprising way, too, researchers from Thailand suggest.

Drink tea to stop sugar spike, researchers suggest.

Drinking a cup of coffee does your body good, as we reported before. But choosing the other morning beverage—tea, that is—could help your health in a surprising way, too, researchers from Thailand suggest.

In the study, researchers had people drink a sugary beverage with either low doses of black tea polyphenols—micronutrients that function as antioxidants—high doses of the polyphenols, or a placebo drink that contained no polyphenols.

The people who ingested the black tea polyphenols experienced less of a blood sugar spike after drinking the sugary beverage than those who consumed the sham drink.

ADVERTISEMENT

Your blood sugar naturally rises after you eat or drink something. But when you eat simple carbs, like the sugar solution the participants drank, your blood sugar rises more quickly. So your pancreas cranks out more insulin to help your body absorb that extra blood sugar for energy.

Over time, though, it becomes harder for your pancreas to keep up with that demand. The glucose builds up in your blood, which can lead to prediabetes or diabetes.

But consuming the black tea polyphenols seems to reduce the blood sugar spike you’d normally experience after drinking something sugary. That may be because the black tea polyphenols may mess with certain enzymes in your body that aid in carbohydrate absorption, the researchers say.

As a result, your body can’t absorb the carbs as well, so you don’t experience the typical blood sugar spike that comes after ingesting them, they believe.

More research needs to be done on a larger scale to get more solid information on how black tea is affecting your blood sugar before any official clinical recommendations can be made.

ADVERTISEMENT

Still, if you want to cut your diabetes risk in the meantime, it can’t hurt to sub in some tea into your morning routine, along with other proven diabetes-prevention tips like healthy eating and exercise.

JOIN OUR PULSE COMMUNITY!

Unblock notifications in browser settings.
ADVERTISEMENT

Eyewitness? Submit your stories now via social or:

Email: eyewitness@pulse.com.gh

ADVERTISEMENT