Can matcha reduce anxiety?
- 3 min reading time
It’s no secret that tea can help people relax when they are stressed or worried. Even simply imagining a warm cup of tea, you can probably recall a peaceful moment or two in your life. Sometimes, people can experience feelings of unease or worry that persist so much so that it affects their quality of life. This is often diagnosed as anxiety. Once people are overwhelmed by anxiety, it’s hard to say if a cup of tea can really help. However, for founder and owner of 3 Leaf Tea Luciana Torous, that’s exactly what she needed.
Torous had quietly struggled with anxiety for years. Throughout her adolescent years, she was plagued by increasingly intrusive thoughts she couldn’t stop, control, or understand. Going through high school, anxious thoughts that used to be a whisper slowly turned into a loud nonstop stream on a continual loop playing inside her head. Naturally, this track was playing on repeat the day Torous first experienced matcha as well.
The matcha was nothing special; just a souvenir from a trip to Japan. It was whisked (perhaps not the most skillfully, but as best as possible) and served in a traditional tea bowl. The effect was on Torous was immediate but what had changed was a puzzle. At first, all she knew was that she felt better. This sparked months of intense research into matcha.
After hundreds of hours of reading and just as many mugs of matcha later, Torous arrived at her answer: drinking matcha helped calm her nerves and dial down the volume on her intrusive thoughts. It was shocking. Could a simple mug of tea have this kind of power? Torous thought it did and this belief is what convinced her to start 3 Leaf Tea.
What Torous experienced first-hand is something that has been ignored by western medicine for years. Counties in Asia that drink tea (ex. China, Japan) have long understood that tea can be used as medicine. Science has only recently started to catch up, prompting multiple studies about how and why matcha can reduce stress with promising and fascinating results. Simply summarized, matcha affects how the chemicals that are released when animals are stressed act in their bodies. This chemical disruption results in what we know as feeling “calm” or “relaxed”. This suggests that matcha can naturally reduce anxiety.
One study even looked at not only the how frequently ingesting matcha but also how the quality of matcha can affect anxiety and compiled compelling data suggesting that continually ingesting high-grade matcha can reduce anxiety-like behavior. While this study was conducted using mice, it does seem to hint that your regular mug of matcha might be doing more for your wellbeing that you thought.
For Luciana Torous, that first sip of matcha which in turn led to a new daily routine not only helped her feel calmer and in control of her life but also became the base of her successful business. At 3 Leaf Tea, we feel that matcha can change people’s lives for the better, helping them to feel their best and most vibrant self. Let us help you unlock the power of your cup of tea.