What you are seeing here are the gift wrappers and labels from about a years worth of Matcha stuck onto a manila folder sitting in my office. Each label represents either 20 or 40 grams of tea. There are over a hundred pieces of gift wrapping paper that I have saved for some unknown project. So here’s a helpful hint if you want to start yet another collection of something cool that may take years to figure out what to do with… When you order any tea from Japan, always have it gift wrapped for free. If you do give the box away it looks like you thought about it in advance, and if it’s just for you, it will feel like a gift to yourself!
I get a typical reaction of complete disbelief when I tell people about consuming 7-10 cups of tea a day. (Although since it became 2016 I have tapered down to about 4-8 cups.) That’s 12 to 20 grams of Matcha per day. 4032 to 6720 grams in a year. That’s… That’s a lot of tea, even by tea drinkers standards. What you might ask did I experience in that first year? I’m glad you asked, let me go over a few of the most noticeable changes I experienced. Let me start with a few “not too great” effects.
I peed a lot. Yes the obvious is true. Tea is a renown diuretic and I urinated a lot… but only for maybe the first month or so. After the initial 3-4 weeks I think my system got used to the steady intake of tea and returned to a normal input versus output ratio as far as my urine was concerned. At first I was having to get up once or twice during the night to use the restroom but this tendency evened out and I slept straight through the night like I said within the first month.
I had a flare up of Gout. Little did I know, but going from about zero intake of caffeine to the 4-8 cups of tea level can have a disastrous impact on your joints if you have a propensity towards gout. I never saw this one coming. Apparently caffeine can actually be good for symptoms of gout because it acts like the commonly prescribed western anti-gout/kidney stone medication Allopurinol that reduces uric acid. However, one cannot simply start consuming a bunch of caffeine (or allopurinol for that matter) and reap the benefits. In fact studies show that going from 0 to 60 as it were in my case can increase the likelihood of a flare up by between 40 and 80 percent. If however one slowly builds up a daily level of caffeine intake about the opposite is true; one is 40-60% less likely to have an attack. Now, these figures are based on the levels coming from coffee. If the caffeine is coming from green tea I would put even money on an even greater beneficial effect just from the alkalizing qualities of green tea alone. Just take it from me, I control my gout by diet (when I behave) if you are caffeine free don’t directly jump to 8-10 cups of green tea a day…work your way up to it.
Goose poop. Imagine eating 8-10 cups of bright green grass a day. This effect also diminishes eventually. Note however that like any chlorophyll rich drink (think wheat grass) it can have a huge cleansing effect on the body. That being said, we have found that if you are on vacation and living it up too much with rich food and drink, Matcha first thing in the morning will likely make you feel a bit ill like taking a handful of vitamins on an empty stomach or straight up loose stools.
I spent a boat load of money. In the quest for the perfect cup of tea I wasted a lot of money hoping that I would find some great deal on “bulk” Matcha. There aren’t any. I also overpaid for the good Matcha that I was drinking. You don’t have to. While there are some great green teas out there, you don’t have to necessarily pay the ultra premium price to experience a good cup of tea. Premium maybe, but not ultra premium. Unless of course money is no object to you. I also have the tendency to get a bit obsessive when I get into a new hobby or idea. So, in typical fashion for me I had to not only get about 20 books on tea, tea ceremony, and general Zen practices, but collected an unnecessary amount of tea utensils like chawan, chashaku, etc. I have since given a number of items away as gifts and may list a few of the antiques here for sale in the future. Just know that in actuality all you need is water, tea, a bowl, and a whisk.
Ok now some great effects:
My blood pressure lowered and stabilized. about three weeks into this my wife and I were at the grocery store and I decided to check my blood pressure at their little pharmacy kiosk. After looking at the numbers I actually assumed that the machine was broken. I had been pre-hypertensive for years. Like 135-140 / 85-95. Sometimes straight-up high like 175/95. It was reading 120/80 that day. That is pretty much picture perfect to the western medical community. I checked it again, checked my wife’s who tends to be a bit low. Everything stayed the same. I checked it at home with my wrist cuff, then started checking it every day at the hospital where I work on our calibrated machine. Yes indeed, the high numbers that I tried to just ignore in the past were not only normal, but often times downright athletic. I guarantee you I had not taken up any new work out routine. Although I knew that green tea was supposed to help with high blood pressure, this was not why I had started drinking it so this was a pleasant surprise.
People and patients around me that started up with the daily tea ritual also told me that their hypertension was going away, and these people were not drinking the high amount of tea that I was. My mother started drinking green tea on a regular basis and actually got light-headed one day. Her doctor told her that her blood pressure was actually too low and had her quit her blood pressure medication and just try staying on green tea instead. Can you believe it?
Deeper sleep. I definitely noticed a deeper, more restful sleep after about a month of taking tea. My family can attest that I need less sleep and wake in the mornings in a brighter mood. I didn’t really have any sleeping issues per say other than sleep paralysis which also seems to have almost disappeared, so again, these effects were serendipitous benefits for me. I didn’t mean, by the way, that I now need less sleep because I have too much caffeine in my system, I mean that I fall asleep faster and feel more refreshed than I used to in general now that I have the ritual of Matcha in my daily practice. It is the unique properties in green tea of GABA, Theanine, and other phytonutrients that help with sleep. Initially some people may have trouble sleeping. One of the people who took my class later told me that she was wired (but in a good way) that evening and couldn’t fall sleep at her usual hour. Her plan was to continue drinking the tea and see if this effect subsides. Other people have told me that this does go away. I myself never had any sleep issues from drinking green tea and it usually is the last thing I do before going to bed.
People telling me I’m hot. Well, maybe not exactly hot. But I would be remiss in my blogging if I didn’t bring up the fact that people have in fact on numerous occasions told me all of those things that we delight in hearing, “wow you look younger now than when I met you 9 years ago!” “your skin really is looking good these days.” “I can tell you’ve lost weight (which I have) …what’s going on?” Etc. These aren’t just anecdotal either. Many people have noticed the exact same compliments after months of tea mindfulness. Just today one of my patients relayed the same sentiment coming from his friends that hadn’t seen him since he started drinking green tea. Like any gradual change, it’s the people who don’t see us every day that will see the biggest differences. The comments on skin and weight are the most common ones I get.
Calm, alert, focus. As I have mentioned elsewhere, initially tea drinking was a practice started by monks in China as far back as the 8th century. They undoubtedly noticed the invigorating qualities that tea imparted. It was praised by the famous Emperor Shen Nong (the father of Chinese herbal medicine) as having a multitude of uses and was noted as having a curative property for any poisons that other herbs might have that he used. Some of today’s doctors like Daniel G. Amen are now actually suggesting that people with depression, ADD, anxiety, and a host of other cognitive issues start taking vitamin A, B and E, beta-carotine, minerals (Zinc), GABA, L-Theanine, and a few basic supplements that act synergistically with GABA & L-Theanine instead of the usual antidepressants, ADHD medications, and other pharmaceuticals. Guess what the exceedingly popular drink called green tea has in abundance? All of these things. No need to even swallow a nasty pill. I have been amazed at how much more focused I have become. I truly feel the same way I do when I haven’t had my eyes checked in a long time and then put on a new pair of glasses with my correct prescription in them. Things seem more clear, crisp, and I notice more details about everything. My wife tells me I have more patience with things as well!
Reduced Joint pain. On one hand, or should I say not on one hand, my wedding ring kept falling off. On the other, this meant that general inflammation in my body was lessening. I really doubt I lost weight in my fingers. What was happening was indeed an alkalizing of my whole system. I noticed a definite decrease in joint stiffness, muscle pain, and overall bloating in my body. My clothes fit looser and I shrunk about an inch and a half waist size in my jeans.
Decreased ocular pressure. Now I’m not sure if this is possible, but I had been having my eye doctor monitor my ocular pressure because it had been testing high a few times in a row over the course of about a year. After about 4 months of consistent green tea the pressure fell within a normal range. I think one of them was coming in around 26 – 27 mm Hg. It recently went down to about 20. My excellent optician at Michigan Optical told me that he didn’t believe that blood pressure had any correlation on ocular pressure, so if indeed the tea is lowering it I don’t have a clue how, but does it really matter?
No room in there for beer. If you’ve got ten cups of tea in there the last thing you want is a glass of beer! This is true, but there is something more to it than just a full stomach. I have shared earlier that many people have noticed a decreased desire for alcohol in general when they are drinking so much green tea. One of the legendary reasons that Samurai took to the tea ceremony so earnestly was that the drinking of green tea was purported to relieve a hang-over. (I can’t believe that the feudal warlords of ancient Japan would over indulge in sake?) Could it be however, that maybe what you don’t read about is that Matcha may have also been utilized for it’s effects of preventing the desires of these Samurai to drink in the first place? A number of patients have shared stories of “just not feeling like they wanted anything” since drinking green tea. There are some direct correlations between the constituents of green tea and some pharmaceuticals used to treat addiction, so this idea is not too far fetched.
I’m sure I’ve missed a few big ones, but these changes are among the biggest…