Monday Wellness Reflection: Tea

Our Monday Wellness was on tea. The presentation can be found here.

We chose to do my Monday Wellness project on tea because we had heard that teas had a lot of health benefits. However, I did not know why exactly teas had such health benefits. Also, I knew that there are thousands of different blends of tea and had heard that different teas have different health benefits. We had also heard of how antioxidants in tea were good for the body, but we did not know what antioxidants actually were; we also heard that tea was a good substitute for coffee, but beyond "because it is more healthy," we did not know exactly why.

When researching for my Monday Wellness, I found it interesting that all "true" teas (white, green, oolong, black, pu'er) are made from the same plant, Camellia sinesis. I had previously thought that different teas came from different plants (e.g. green tea came from green tea plants, black tea came from black tea plants, etc.). The different teas and their distinct characteristics come from the different ways the plant is processed.

We also finally learned how exactly antioxidants and caffeine affect our bodies. We always hear that antioxidants are good and that caffeine is bad, but many people do not understand why this is so. Antioxidants actually work by keeping harmful particles in our body, called "free radicals," from being harmful. Caffeine is actually a naturally occurring chemical compound in some plants that is a stimulant drug in humans. It was very interesting to find out that caffeine in moderation is actually good for the body, since it increases mental alertness, improves memory, and reduces the risk of certain diseases.

The most important theme of our Monday Wellness was moderation. We also talked about moderation and balance in class during our health unit. Sure, drinking tea is good, but drinking too much for too long may result in side effects. In fact, drinking too much of anything, even water, which is essential for life, is harmful. Furthermore, "too much" is different for everyone depending on their age, gender, body weight, and many, many other factors; it is not a concrete number. We frequently want to hear numbers so that we know what we should or should not do -- I saw this when people started asking me about how many cups of tea they should drink and how many cups was too much -- but we should keep in mind that there are not really any clearly set limits that fit everyone.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give us an 8. Since we did not practice our presentation together before actually presenting it in class, our timing was a little off. It took more time than we expected to set up and clean up our activity, so in the end I did most of the presentation while my partner set up and cleaned up the activity, since she brought the supplies for it. We also wanted to do the activity before most of the presentation to wake up the students and get them more involved in the presentation. However (as stated before), it took longer than we expected to set up the activity, so we got through half of our presentation first before we did the activity. As expected, the activity did wake up the students and get them more involved: during the half of the presentation before the activity, I felt like the students were just staring at me talk and not engaging; after the activity, the students seemed much more lively and asked a lot more questions.