What is Purple Tea?
We are all familiar with numerous tea varieties such as black tea…
….green tea, oolong tea, and so on. Have you ever heard of purple tea? It combines the health benefits of green and black tea, adds a new unique health benefit, and provides farmers with an opportunity to enhance their revenue. Does it sound too wonderful to be true? Is there a snag? Is it going to deplete your bank account? The answer to all of the above questions is NO!
Purple tea, like other teas, is derived from the Camellia Sinensis plant. The same plant from which we obtain our famous black and green tea. The tea’s purple color is generated by a rare genetic mutation that generates anthocyanin, the same strong anti-oxidant found in blueberries. In reality, it comprises 1.5 percent, whilst blueberries contain.1 percent.
Where Does Purple Tea Come From?
Wild mutations were first discovered in tiny amounts in China. In Kenya, however, a public-private collaboration has formed to isolate this mutation and mass-produce Purple tea. It’s cultivated at heights ranging from 4,500 to 7,500 feet, with the majority of it coming from Kenya’s Nandi Hills area. This high altitude near the equator produces increased UV bombardment, causing the plants to develop extremely high amounts of anti-oxidants to defend the leaves from harm. Purple tea is pesticide-free due to its high altitude.
Health Benefits of Purple Tea
This healthy concoction has been used in Southeast Asian countries for a couple of decades. The extracts are found to be promising as memory enhancers and calmative agents and are now becoming increasingly famous all around the globe mainly due to the variety of health benefits it offers.
The leaves are loaded with healthy antioxidants, flavonoids, and peptides which are a considerably promising natural remedy for a wide range of health issues. Extracts from this plant are also used in a number of herbal beauty products because of the effects of the flavonoids it contains, on the skin and hair.
Can Help Improve Your Skin and Hair
The extracts are used to treat male pattern baldness and hair graying. Anthocyanin, the active component in Purple tea, has been shown to improve blood circulation in the scalp, therefore thickening and reinforcing hair follicles. So you may make a purple tea mixture and rinse your scalp with it as a hair tonic. Within 3-5 weeks, you might notice spectacular improvements.
Improve The Brain Health
Purple tea extracts have shown potential memory-enhancing effects in animal models, as well as a wide range of neurological advantages. Mice have a blood-brain barrier that is comparable to humans’. The anthocyanins contained in purple tea have been shown in studies to penetrate this barrier, boosting the antioxidant activity in their brain.
According to research, the purple tea leaf is a source of antioxidants that are extremely likely to pass into our brain. That cannot be said of all dietary antioxidants since the blood-brain barrier is very selective and prevents many chemicals from entering.
What It Taste Like?
Purple tea has a taste that is nice, sweet, and woodsy. We used slightly less than boiling water and steeped the tea for around 3 minutes, and there was virtually no astringency. Purple tea is black in color, yet the infusion is light with a faint violet tint. According to some, it has both black and green taste qualities.
It tastes very much like green tea, with no astringency or tannin bitterness, but it’s not grassy or vegetal. Because of its forgiving character, this may be an excellent way for those wanting to improve their health to jump on the tea train. Purple tea mixtures Purple tea lends itself well to blending and may be blended with other teas to “stack up” on health benefits.
Possible Side Effects
It is a widespread fallacy that when a product is natural or herbal, it must have no negative effects. Although generally considered harmless, purple tea has been known to produce nausea and upset the stomach, resulting in diarrhea. Especially if consumed in big numbers. However, due of its reduced tannin and caffeine concentration, these adverse effects are lesser than those induced by green and black tea.
Pregnant and breastfeeding moms should also exercise caution, as the effects of this tea on these people have not been well researched. Although purple tea has been shown to offer a variety of health benefits, it should not be used in place of doctor-prescribed medicine.
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