Cases of type 2 diabetes are growing rapidly around the world. Type 2 diabetes is the typical diabetes of adulthood linked to a reduced production of insulin or to the body's poor efficiency in using the insulin. This type of diabetes is linked to lifestyle and nutrition and can cause various complications affecting the heart, sight or kidneys. This is why it is important to combat type 2 diabetes. The weapons available are, in addition to medicines, certainly the diet. The study we are talking about today focuses on the anti-diabetes properties of a drink known and appreciated almost everywhere, black tea. The research is available online and has just been accepted for publication in The British Journal of Nutrition (Ansari et al, BJN, Dec 2020).
Black tea is a drink obtained by infusion of the leaves of Camellia sinensis. To carry out the experiments and evaluate the impact of black tea on blood sugar, the scientists used a decoction prepared with 25 grams of dried black tea leaves in a liter of water. Everything was brought to a boil, then removed from the heat and left to rest for 15 minutes, then the tea was filtered. The researchers then carried out a series of tests in the laboratory and came to observe that black tea is able to stimulate and to increase insulin production and to improve the use of insulin by cells. Not only that, black tea also acts at the level of digestion of starches, which are long chains of glucose that during digestion are broken down into glucose by raising blood sugar. The slower these starches are digested, the lower their impact on blood sugar levels will be. Well, black tea works by slowing down the digestion of starches. Finally, the researchers also observed that black tea is able to reduce the glycation of insulin. Glycation is a process that occurs by glucose especially in case of diabetes and causes a change in the structure of insulin, which becomes less active. These anti-diabetes properties just seen are explained by the presence in black tea of ??particular antioxidant substances such as rutin and quercetin.
