"I've kicked the habit, now what?"

Hopefully my last blog convinced you to stop drinking coffee, but you may be left wondering what you're going to drink instead? There are plenty of options out there, but two spring to mind that are infinitely better for you than the others.

Obviously the top one is water. Good old H2O! It rehydrates, detoxes, quenches thirst like nothing else can and is incredibly good for you. We know humans are 75% water, so having a drink that can 'top us up' as it were is nothing but good news!
Since you're told about the pros of water pretty much everywhere, I'll save you hearing it all again. ;)

So instead this blog is dedicated to the wonders of Tea! (I tried to find the chemical formula for you but it's a mix of multiple chemicals and too complicated to calculate - sorry!)
Like water, tea is incredibly good at rehydrating you and it may surprise you to know it's completely calorie free! The only calories you'll find in tea are from the milk and sugar if you use them. It still has a minor amount of caffeine in, so perfect for weaning yourself out of a coffee addiction, but at such so levels it's about on par with the capsaicin from chillis. However unlike coffee, it has plenty of good chemicals in there too that are just waiting to improve your health!

First up are all the antioxidants - wonderful little things that travel around your body scooping up any free-radicals it can find. Free radicals are best known for their ageing effects - tiring out your cells and making you look older. They're nasty little things that have even been linked to causes of cancer, so anything that will get rid of them for you is great!
Antioxidants also help your cells to absorb nutrients more efficiently, so they not only reduce signs ageing they can actually help reverse them too. :) (It's not a miracle cure, you're not gonna look like you've just been on 10 Years Younger but you might feel like it!)

Next we have all the benefits tea can provide for your heart - reducing your chances of a fatal heart attack or stroke! Blood clots can develop if your arteries are clogged up with cholesterol, causing some pretty nasty effects on the body. Tea can help to smooth the arteries back out, reducing the risk of blood clots. A 5 year study from the Netherlands found that people who drink 2-3 cups of black tea daily have a 70% lower risk of fatal heart attacks than non-tea drinkers. Not bad!
Tea can also strengthen your bones, thanks to the fantastic phytochemicals it contains. A different study over 10 years showed that tea drinkers had the strongest bones, even after taking into account age, weight, height, background differences etc. Ageing increases the risk of bones becoming weak and brittle, so get drinking tea now to reduce the impact age will have on your body. :)

Drinking tea raises your metabolism - 5 cups of green tea a day will increase your metabolism enough to burn an extra 80 calories per day. You may not want to drink that much, but even 1 cup will still burn 16 more calories. When added into a healthy diet with exercise it can make a difference.


There are plenty of other good things that tea can do for you, but the reasons above should be more than enough to convince you! But if you really couldn't possibly part from your coffee addiction, stay tuned for the next blog with some ideas on how to recycle the coffee grinds when you're done with them...