According to the British "Times" website reported on August 25, a study showed that drinking tea can improve people's creativity.
The researchers had the men and women in the trial drink tea or water, and then had them complete the test, which included playing a word association game or solving a set of riddles. These tests can measure a form of human creativity called "convergent thinking." After analyzing the findings, the researchers found that excluding the potential effects of personal factors such as intelligence and language ability, tea drinkers performed much better on word association games and puzzle solving tests.
The researchers say it's unclear why drinking tea has such a gain effect. The tea contained caffeine and theanine that improve concentration, but the 100 subjects involved in the study drank only a small amount of tea (an average of 90 milliliters) and were tested soon after drinking the tea, meaning that any effect of the tea was negligible.
The researchers say the results suggest that drinking tea itself — rather than the biological components contained in the tea — has a gain effect. People who drank tea performed better on the test, possibly because psychological factors were at play. The findings were published in the Dutch journal Food Quality and Preference.
"Previous research has found that people tend to associate drinking tea with specific personality traits, such as intelligence, creativity, elegance, confidence and steadiness," they said. ”
"Perhaps when stimulated by the tea, the participants' mental representations were also activated, and they unconsciously thought they should be smarter and more creative," they noted. ”
They concluded: "Future research should focus on specific mechanisms and figure out which variables can mitigate the effects of drinking tea on convergent thinking." ”
In 2017, the research team found that drinking tea can also boost another form of creativity, namely divergent thinking.
In the test, the researchers asked subjects to make attractive models out of blocks or come up with a creative name for a noodle shop. Like fruits and vegetables, tea is a natural source of polyphenols and flavonoids. These antioxidants help prevent cell damage.
A large long-term study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health found that tea drinkers were less likely to develop diabetes. It is believed that this is due to the regulatory effect of polyphenols on blood sugar.
Drinking tea can also reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.
A study published in 2014 by the University of Calabria in Italy even showed that the bergamot contained in Earl's tea was comparable to statins, raising "good" HDL cholesterol levels while lowering "bad" LDL cholesterol levels.
Source: Reference News Network