Can You Drink Tea While Fasting? Is It Beneficial or Harmful?

Fasting may be complete or partial abstention from food, sometimes only with regard to solid foods or even liquid, with restriction to the intake of very few particular foods for a determined period of time. The varieties are so many, such as intermittent fasting, religious fasting, and medical fasting. Most forms of fasting will give one multiple probable benefits due to eating times being constrained, with reduction of calorie intake and stimulation of fat burning. It can also enhance insulin sensitivity. On the metabolic front, when a body is subjected to fasting, the activation of autophagy-aiding degradation of injurious cells, thereby promoting cell health-finally happens. Scientific evidence has indicated that it decreases inflammation markers and can retard age-related diseases.

Can You Drink Tea While Fasting?
According to Life Times, caffeine, theobromine, and theophylline are present in tea, thereby serving as an effective stimulant of gastric acid secretion. When that happens, your body starts secreting digestive enzymes, hormones, and neurotransmitters, which further digest food. The polyphenols in tea—especially green tea and white tea—are helpful in promoting gut motility, thus aiding digestion. In other words, having tea can make you hungry sooner than usual.For example, ripe Pu-erh tea from China is considered to be the best tea for digestive in Japan as well as in Korea, and it is especially suitable for drinking ripe Pu-erh tea after eating a meal or greasy meat.Being a professional in the sphere of tea chemistry, with several years of experience in China, I must say that on the internet, there is a lot of wrong information about this question. I seriously have to tell everybody: one shouldn't drink tea on an empty stomach,, and even more so when you are fasting. In China, drinking tea on an empty stomach is tabu among tea lovers! Because during fasting, it strongly irritates the mucous membrane of the stomach. Tea contains a high level of polyphenols and caffeine; on an empty stomach, these can directly stimulate the stomach lining. Especially green tea or white tea, which is more acidic, may lead to excessive gastric acid secretion and cause stomach discomfort, nausea, or even stomach pain.

Drinking tea on an empty stomach during fasting can cause symptoms such as dizziness and palpitations. When your blood sugar is already low, the caffeine in the tea will further stimulate the central nervous system, leading to symptoms such as dizziness, palpitations, or "tea drunkenness." Typical symptoms of tea drunkenness include fatigue, nausea, and cold sweats. This effect is especially noticeable when drinking raw Pu'er tea from Yunnan.

SEE MORE ABOUT TEAS
If you have questions about selecting tea:
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If you have questions about the benefits of tea:
Health-benefits-of-chinese-tea

If you have questions about brewing tea:
How-to-brew-loose-leaf-tea