By Cheryl M. Luis
Milk tea has been popular nowadays, and it’s every ones favorite! Admittedly I’m one of those ‘Milk tea addicts.’
Milk tea is a drink that consists of black tea, milk, ice, and chewy tapioca pearls, all shaken together like a martini and served with that famously fat straw to accommodate the marbles of tapioca that cluster at the bottom of the cup. It is also added with various sugars, sweet syrups, sliced up fruits, boba or tapioca pearls.
This yummy treat holds many benefits that will have your tastebuds craving more each day, there are also some disadvantages while enjoying this creative concoction on a regular basis. Read on to find out what happens to your body when you drink milk tea every day.
Drinking milk tea instead of regular tea can prevent teeth stains
As we drink a regular tea, it causes teeth stain worse than coffee. But with milk tea, the ‘tea stain’ can no longer affect your teeth due to the combination of milk and other ingredients.
Milk tea can keep you up at night
Milk tea is often made with black tea, which contains about 47 milligrams of caffeine; you may have some trouble falling asleep.
Within 15 minutes of drinking milk tea, its caffeine has already entered your bloodstream and has taken effect on elevating your energy levels. If enjoyed right before bed, don’t expect to get any sleep right away. From there, it takes roughly six hours for just half of the caffeine consumed to exit your system, the National Sleep Foundation explained
Milk tea could bring anxiety-like symptoms
Curling up with a cup of milk tea every day may seem like a relaxing way to end each day, but it turns out that this delicious drink can actually trigger symptoms of anxiety when enjoyed in excess.
According to Harvard Medical School, consuming caffeine like that contained in tea can make you jittery and cause your body to react in much the same way it would if you were dealing with anxiety.
Since caffeine is also a stimulant, it triggers the body’s fight or flight response — a biological reaction to a perceived harmful situation — which many people who experience anxiety tend to encounter quite often. However, that’s not all.
While milk tea may make your taste buds happy, it won’t put you in such a happy mood.
Milk tea can help strengthen your bones
While it’s well known that drinking milk every day can help strengthen your bones, milk tea is actually no different. According to a study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2000, older women who regularly drank tea had higher bone mineral density than those who didn’t drink any tea at all.
Researchers believe that flavonoids found in tea helped contribute to the higher density of their bones. They concluded that regularly drinking tea could possibly help to protect older women from developing fragile bones and, more importantly, osteoporosis.
Drinking milk tea may not be great for your heart
If your heart yearns for tea every day, here’s some good news: It turns out that tea is indeed good for the health of that very vital organ. Black tea has been shown to significantly boost your arteries’ ability to pump blood throughout your body, keeping your cardiovascular system — and, therefore, your heart — in tip top shape. However, if you’re looking to gain this benefit from drinking milk tea, you’d better try another beverage.
You could become addicted to drinking milk tea every day
There may be a very good reason that you’re craving milk tea every day — aside from the fact that it’s so good. Because of the caffeine that is contained in each cup, forming an unhealthy dependence on milk tea could become a very real thing very quickly.
According to the Addiction Center, consuming caffeine on a daily basis can create dependence. When going without it for a day, you may experience symptoms of withdrawal, such as tiredness, headaches, and muscle pain, the National Sleep Foundation revealed.
Drinking milk tea can bring good and bad for your health. Make sure to consume milk tea moderately and with caution. Everything that is excessive is not good for your health.
Cheryl M. Luis is the wife of George N. True II. Like her husband, she advocates health and lifestyle writing and vows to continue “Health Frontiers” as her husband’s legacy.
