Tea and Heart Health - Caffeine Free Green Tea?

by Tea for me
(Ventura County, CA)

I experienced Atrial Defibrillation and was told to avoid caffeine. I was a BIG coffee and black tea drinker and have cut out coffee, but wonder if I can drink green tea.

I hear the decaf process destroys the antioxidants in tea so I am hoping there is some natural tea that won;t stimulate the heart muscle.

Answer:

Thanks for your question.

Most decaffeinated green tea contains about one third of antioxidants found in natural caffeinated tea, in addition to tasting quite bad.

The best decaffeinated green tea are made using the carbon dioxide process. Given your concern about heart health, you may want to get further details here:

Decaffeinated Green Tea - A Review

Tea caffeine is more gentle than coffee, so switching over from coffee to tea is definitely the right thing to do.

Whether it is suitable will depend from tea to tea, and individual to individual.

First thing first, loose tea generally contains less caffeine than teabags because the extraction process is slower.

Among the loose green tea, you will find that the higher quality tea (that contains more buds than leaves) contain more caffeine, EGCG and theanine - which is a powerful relaxant and acts to counteract the caffeine.

Lower quality green tea contains more leaves has less caffeine but much less theanine.

All these are covered in details in

Tea Caffeine - Why It Is Good For You

Green Tea Caffeine - 4 Sure-Fire Way To Minimise

I am not in any sense medically qualified, but you get the idea.

There are many kinds of tea out there to meet you needs, you just need to experiment a bit to find your sweet spot.

Hope this helps.