If you drink chai tea every day, you may not realize what it’s doing to your body. But first, what even is it? Chai tea — or masala tea, as it is also called – is a combination of black tea and spices like ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom.
It’s most often brewed with both milk and water. Prior to serving, it’s also sweetened. Many people prefer to drink the tea in latte form, and you can find the popular concoction in most coffee shops.
Although you may not order a chai latte for its medicinal purposes, the beverage still holds some healing power. According to experts and scientific research, this is what happens to your body when you drink chai tea on the regular.
Tea may improve your digestion
Because ginger is added to chai, the beverage is great at staving off nausea. According to one 2014 study on pregnancy-induced nausea, 1.1 to 1.5 grams of ginger daily “significantly improved the symptoms of nausea” in pregnant women. As Healthline highlighted, that’s roughly the same amount of ginger in a cup of chai tea. Sounds like making the choice to drink chai tea every day isn’t too bad.
Studies have also shown that other chai essentials, such as cinnamon and cloves as well as cardamom and black pepper, possess antibacterial properties. These properties can prevent digestive problems resulting from bacterial infections.
Your heart may benefit if you drink chai every day
- If you want to improve your heart health, choosing to drink tea every day may do just that.
- A study conducted in the United Kingdom in 2007 found that consuming three cups of black tea — the main ingredient in chai — per day reduced the risk of developing coronary heart disease.
- It’s not just the black tea in chai that can improve your heart health though. Cinnamon, one of the more prevalent spices in chai, has also been found to lower blood pressure, triglycerides, and LDL (aka “bad”) cholesterol
Your teeth may benefit in a number of ways
When making chai at home, don’t skip the cloves. These dried flower buds have many medicinal benefits, as noted by Medical News Today, but one of the coolest ones has to be their anesthetic properties. One study found that cloves, when made into a gel, possess the “potential to replace benzocaine as a topical agent before needle insertion.” In addition to inducing insensitivity to pain, cloves have also been found to have anti-inflammatory properties.
You may stabilize your blood sugar
- One study revealed cinnamon’s potential ability to reduce blood glucose in both patients with type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance.
- Another study found that ginger helped lower blood sugar levels in type 2 diabetics.
- Healthline noted that most studies recommend consuming one to six grams of each spice per day, which is more than you’ll get in a teabag.
Chai will help prevent cancer
Chai just wouldn’t taste the same without cardamom. And, as it happens, it also wouldn’t be as good at staving off cancer. As Healthline highlighted, studies in mice have shown that cardamom increases the activity of enzymes that help fight cancer. Although most studies on cardamom have been performed on mice, one study did find that cardamom was able to stop human oral cancer cells from multiplying in test tubes.