[Kevin]
Hey, Michelle, how are you doing?

[Michelle]
Pretty good, Kev. I'm recovering from a bit of a concussion, but I think I'm back to normal or on my way.

[Kevin]
Oh, good. Good. I'm glad that everything's improving because concussions are never fun and it's never something you want to go through.

[Michelle]
Well, you know what? It's been a really amazing confirmation for me that everything that I do to focus on nutrition is benefiting me right now, because at least I think so, because I feel like the knock on the head that I had, I should have been a lot worse. Now, there's not a lot you can, I mean, the brain is different than the other organs of the body, but I have to believe it's played a role in my recovery.

[Kevin]
Well, everything's connected, so it would make sense that it would. So you should have been knocked on the head years ago. Is that what you're saying?

[Michelle]
Maybe. Knocks some sense into me.

[Kevin]
Exactly. I should be next. Well, I'm glad that you're improving.

I might be a little low energy today just because I'm actually just sort of in the middle of a bit of a cold, so my voice might be a little bit different. So I'm drinking my tea here, and I've been drinking a whole lot of tea the last few days because my mother always told me, when you're sick, drink tea. So that's what I've been doing.

[Michelle]
Every episode, we are learning more and more about how wise your mother was.

[Kevin]
Exactly. Wise, or I have often used other words to describe her, but we'll go with wise. We'll go with wise.

[Michelle]
Oh, my gosh.

[Kevin]
So in drinking all of this tea over the last few days, it's really gotten me wondering, if there is actually some truth behind, and I'm sure there is, behind what my mother told me, that you should drink tea when you're sick. And I know a lot of it is just general hydration, but it got me thinking about tea generally and the part it plays in our lives. I know I drink a lot of it.

I've known a ton of people who also drink it, and I know it's something exceedingly close to your heart. So I thought today we might delve into the world of tea a little bit, if that works for you.

[Michelle]
So close to my heart. You know, they call me the tea lady or the tea nutritionist.

[Kevin]
Among other things.

[Michelle]
Tea and health are my thing, so I would love to talk about this. In fact, the challenge is going to be getting me to shut up.

[Kevin]
Well, don't worry. I'll fix it in post-editing. Not to worry.

Not to worry. Okay, well, that's great. So we're now into nutrition for noobs, the tea episode.

[Michelle]
The tea episode.

[Kevin]
So I think the first question, I mean, I'm going to ask a few really, really basic questions because we're all noobs here. But then we are going to get into more interesting stuff. So for people who do know a little bit of the basics more than me, just bear with us for a couple minutes.

So my first question is, I see a ton of different types of tea out there. I mean, there's, you know, your typical bagged orange pico. And then you've got black tea and green tea and white tea and tisane, which I know I don't think is actually tea.

But what are the – like, is orange pico actually made from oranges? Or, like, what are the differences with the different types of tea? Because they all look the same to me.

[Michelle]
Oh, my gosh. You've got so many questions in there in that one little question. I always say that tea is complex but not complicated.

[Kevin]
Okay.

[Michelle]
So in case the listeners aren't aware, I think I may have mentioned it in my very, very original bio in episode one. But aside from being a registered nutritionist, I'm also a certified tea sommelier. And so tea and health are really the niche that I carve for myself because when I was in nutrition school, nobody could answer my questions about tea.

Like, how does tea fit into this, into our diet?

[Kevin]
Right.

[Michelle]
And when I was in tea education, nobody could really make concrete connections for tea and health for me. Everybody knew tea was healthy, but they couldn't really articulate why, right?

[Kevin]
Okay.

[Michelle]
So I made that a very focused area of study. But, yeah, the first thing to learn is that, you know, what a tea is and what a tea isn't, like you said. So basically, anything is truly tea if it comes from a plant called the chameleon sinensis plant.

And, you know, the analogy that I like to use that most people can relate to, it's still oversimplifying, but it's a very useful explanation. Most people don't realize that most wine comes from red grapes and that it's just whether or not you include the peel or not as to whether it becomes a red wine or a white wine. And it was a wine sommelier that told me this.

That's oversimplifying wine, for sure.

[Kevin]
I like oversimplification, it's okay.

[Michelle]
But when it comes to tea, it's very similar. All tea, and when I say tea, I mean white tea, green tea, yellow tea, oolong tea, black tea, and poor tea or dark tea, all come from the chameleon sinensis plant. And then anything else that comes from any other plant, the chamomile plant, the lavender plant, the tulsi plant, you know, any turmeric, any of those spices that we use in the tea, those are all not tea by definition.

And as you said, we call those tea sands. And then within that tea category, the chameleon sinensis, we have different varietals of chameleon sinensis plants, the same way that wine has different varietals of grapes. Right.

So I love wine and I love tea. I think that's probably why I became so enthralled with tea.

[Kevin]
Right. And I didn't realize that there was so much overlap, actually, between wine and tea and the fact that you are a tea sommelier and matching tea with foods and the different flavors and all that, like it is very complex. I know just eating dinner with you is always a joy because you can bring out interesting flavors and combinations that I've never thought about before.

So it is fascinating.

[Michelle]
You know, one of the most fun events that we do at my shop, the Tea Lounge in London, Ontario, and we do it every couple of months, we do this dining event where I work with a local chef and the chef comes up with four courses of cuisine and then I pair a tea or a tisane with each one of the chef's courses to either compliment or contrast what they've done. And that's what sommeliers do with wine.

[Kevin]
Right.

[Michelle]
And I think that's what drew me in because I thought that I was going to learn about tea, but I found out in studying tea, I found about terroir and chemistry and culture and geography and history and all of these different things that really take it from just being a beverage and turning it into an experience. But then when I understood the health benefits of tea, my mind was just blown. This is a good segue into what we're going to talk about.

Because when you're in nutrition training, you basically think that the world is a deathtrap when you start to learn.

[Kevin]
I'm sure. Sometimes I feel that way after our episodes, let me tell you.

[Michelle]
When you learn about what's wrong with the food supply and the soil and the environmental damage and processed food and all of these things, it gets very scary. But when it comes to beverages, all we learn about is what you can't drink. They tell you stop drinking coffee, stop drinking soda, no sugary beverage.

Kombucha, yeah, some kombuchas are great, some kombuchas not. So they really tell you what you can't drink and then they tell you about all the things that are wrong with water. I think we talked about this in our water episode.

And then it becomes like, what the heck can I drink?

[Kevin]
Your own sweat.

[Michelle]
So that's why, you know, thank goodness I learned that about water because then I learned that tea can be the absolute healthiest natural beverage on the planet for you as long as you make it with good quality water.

[Kevin]
Right, right.

[Michelle]
So I really learned to turn to tea as my beverage of choice, along with good quality water, in order to provide something to fill that space, particularly for giving up coffee.

[Kevin]
Right, which I'm not quite there yet. I still need my coffee in the morning, but I'm trying to cut down.

[Michelle]
So interesting antidote, and this could probably be a complete different episode, but let me just plug one of my partners, my friend, Jenna Goodhand, and she's the owner of Cafetsia. And that's the coffee that we serve at the tea lounge because, believe it or not, a university professor at the University of Western Ontario in our city in London, Ontario, came up with a way to infuse tasteless herbs into coffee so that it basically behaves the same way that tea does. It modulates the caffeine effect.

And I know that's probably going to end up being one of your questions at some point.

[Kevin]
That's my very next question, but yeah, good segue, good segue.

[Michelle]
Yeah, but yeah, so it's kind of softening my aversion from coffee that when I made all of my healthy transformation, I had a very unhealthy relationship with coffee, and I'm sure that you do not. In fact, I know you don't because I've spent a week at the cottage with you. I know that morning coffee is very important to you, and I get that.

That's very, very common, and I really understand that. But I did not have that healthy relationship with coffee. I was drinking a ridiculous amount of coffee from the moment that I woke up until the moment I went to bed, and I was very heavily overcaffeinated.

[Kevin]
Well, you didn't know me in university. I was like that in university and post-university, and it was actually when I started having sleep issues that I said I really need to just cut back a little bit.

[Michelle]
Well, that's probably where it started because the only beverage you could really get outside of the university library was the coffee stand, at least where I went to school.

[Kevin]
Exactly. No, I spent so many days at Plug for Ottawa, F&S, Fathers & Sons. I think it's closed now, unfortunately, but they had a bottomless pot of coffee, and if I was cramming for an exam or something, let me tell you, I drank so much bad coffee there, and it was always delicious.

But I also had a very unhealthy relationship with it, which brings me to my next question, and I want to talk a little bit about caffeine because obviously coffee and tea, and I'm just using tea generically, they both have caffeine, but I find that why I still have my coffee addiction is just early in the morning I need that hit, and I find that coffee gives me a jolt of caffeine, whereas tea doesn't.

I can't drink tea right before bed because I find it does impact me, but I can't drink coffee past about 11 o'clock in the morning because it impacts me for the night. It seems that the caffeine, is it different? Is there less?

Why are there these differences in the caffeine kick that you have?

[Michelle]
Sure. I used to do a lot of lectures on this, and then there's what I've always known or learned that is part of that sort of original explanation, and then there's a second piece I'm going to tell you about that I have recently learned.

[Kevin]
Okay.

[Michelle]
Hot off the presses. First of all, when we understand and we start to change our mindset that tea isn't really a beverage, it's actually a food, it's actually a plant, it's a leafy green vegetable, then we start to understand why we have those differences because coffee is a bean. It's a part of a plant, but it's not the whole plant.

[Kevin]
Okay.

[Michelle]
When we're taking tea and we're turning it into something that we're steeping in a cup, we're actually dealing with a whole food, with the whole plant. And the difference lies in the chemistry of that plant. And it's about not how caffeine works when it hits the bloodstream, it's about the whole package.

It's about a concert of nutrients and how humans will metabolize that concert of nutrients. So when you're drinking coffee, there is no other nutrient traveling in the bloodstream to modulate or impact how that caffeine behaves or how the body metabolizes that caffeine. So you drink your coffee, the caffeine just jumps right into your bloodstream, you get that jolt, and then a short while later it drops off and you get a crash.

[Kevin]
Yes.

[Michelle]
And then you go and drink some more. If you're old Michelle, you cycle through that spike and crash, spike and crash, spike and crash all day long. And that's why I would go to a meeting and then I would leave that meeting and I would go, I would have sometimes like, well, back when in our banking days, I would have anywhere between eight and 20 meetings a day, depending upon the day.

And sometimes there were all day sessions and you would have breaks. So I would have to go and get another spike to get me through those very, very intense cognitive high energy interactions all day long. But tea behaves differently because we have, I kind of call it the holy trinity of nutrients.

We have caffeine and then we have the antioxidant compounds and we have theanine, which is a non-protein forming amino acid. And those are really the three that we really need to understand in terms of understanding the total opportunity of health benefits of tea. But when it comes to caffeine release specifically, when those three nutrients travel in the bloodstream, the caffeine releases more slowly and over a longer period of time.

So if you're actually going to study or work, you're much better off benefiting from having one or two or three cups of tea. And then it will release slowly. If you could see what I'm drawing with my finger right now, I'm kind of drawing a graph that kind of rises and it goes up slowly over a period of up to 10 hours even.

And then it starts to, so it crescendos and then it decrescendos off.

[Kevin]
It's a nice gentle hill versus the peaks and valleys of the coffee spikes.

[Michelle]
So it's actually healthier for you because there's a lot of like, we don't get organ stress from that. We don't stress our adrenal glands. You know, we get, we get a prolonged period of heightened concentration, heightened mood, ability to learn, ability to concentrate.

So, and the reason that is, that's not all the caffeine effect is really, the caffeine is really the energy and the, the actual learning capability and the calm comes from the theanine, the other nutrient, which is the non-protein forming amino acid. So it's not a, it's not an amino acid that's going to become one of the structure building proteins. It's more of a, of a brain supportive nutrient.

And it's really the superpower of tea, if you ask me. I call it, this is why tea becomes a superfood because, Kevin, unless we ferment a food, it does not cross our blood brain barrier.

[Kevin]
Okay.

[Michelle]
When we ferment wine, it becomes alcohol and alcohol crosses, crosses the blood brain barrier. And that's why we can become drunk. If we extract nutrients and we, we, you know, in a lab turn them into a drug and we take it apart from its other co-factor components, it has the ability to penetrate and cross that blood brain barrier.

But food, when food is whole, no food crosses the blood brain barrier, except for tea, because tea has this special nutrient called theanine. And theanine is so special in that regard. It's actually is extracted by the pharmaceutical industry.

You can buy theanine as a supplement. It's used in other, you know, sort of brain supportive medications, Alzheimer's medications. I understand it's been used and tried in Parkinson's trials and other different things.

So when it travels with caffeine and the antioxidant compounds, it's benefiting every organ system of our body. So it's not only slower releasing the caffeine, but it's also delivering nutrients to all of those organs, and it's crossing the blood brain barrier, and it's helping to repair damaged receptor sites in your brain. It's helping to enhance your mood and your cognitive function, your ability to remember things, memory, recall, all of the things.

And that's why I think I'm actually one of the reasons I think I'm having much better success than I've seen from other people in having an injury like a head injury, like the one that I had a couple weeks ago. That's a very difficult statement for me to make, and I should be cautious because there's less that we know about the brain than we do know about the brain. Everybody's brain injury is different.

So my experience is not going to be the same as the experience of someone who has the exact same head injury. But I know that I have had these behaviors as a lifestyle, and it's not just something that I started to do, and it really does feel like those healthy habits that I developed are serving me right now. And that's always my message about tea and food, is that if you have the behavior every day, it doesn't mean stuff's not going to happen to you.

It doesn't mean you're not going to catch a cold. But your body's ability to be resilient is going to be so much more enhanced.

[Kevin]
Okay. So it's not about the caffeine per se. It's more, and I'm going to simplify this, but it's more coffee has just caffeine, whereas tea has caffeine plus a whole bunch of other good things.

And so that changes how the caffeine is absorbed and used and integrated into your body. Right.

[Michelle]
And it's not that there aren't other good things in coffee either. It's just that that's not the way the human body metabolizes it. There's no nutrient working together with it.

So that was one part of it. The other part of it is how we consume it. So we grind up that coffee bean, and we are getting a very intense infusion that we're getting almost all of the caffeine that that bean had to offer.

When we are steeping tea leaf, with the exception of matcha, which I'll talk about in a second, we're actually making an infusion of the leaf. And we're not getting the same, even though there might be a higher caffeine content in that leaf, we may not be getting all of it. Or we may not be getting all of it in the first infusion.

Some of it will be in the second infusion. Some of it will be in the third infusion. And I'm talking, of course, about, you know, steeping loose leaf in that instance.

If you were steeping a tea bag, and that tea bag will be more coffee-like in its caffeine release, because it's going to be chopped up into smaller particle sizes. It will be less quality leaf than you might have loose leaf. So it's probably harvested further down the stem.

It's probably had a longer growth cycle. Therefore, it's stored more caffeine over its growth cycle than the younger leaves that didn't have that same length of time to develop that. There's a whole lot of variations.

It's not even really a useful question to ask how much caffeine is in tea, because it depends upon wind direction and sunshine and the quality of the soil and how much, you know, was it new growth? Was it first flush? Was it second flush?

Was it camellia sinensis sinensis? Was it camellia sinensis samica? I kind of avoid that question.

The long and the short of it is that, you know, cup per cup. We know that there's been so many studies done comparing tea and coffee. On average, you get about half the amount of caffeine from any cup of tea than you do from any cup of coffee.

And then you also have that difference in caffeine release and caffeine metabolism that you don't get a jolt from the tea the same way that you do from a coffee, unless you're drinking caffezia. So can I mention just the third thing, the thing that I just learned?

[Kevin]
Yes, hot off the press.

[Michelle]
Well, we've mentioned this in several other episodes, and I keep coming back to about the human microbiome and our microbial content and the health of that microbial content and the diversity of that microbial content. So the people, for example, that can't drink caffeinated beverages after six o'clock, or they can't sleep, right? And then there's the people that don't have an issue with that.

I hate them all. They can really drink until the cows come home, and then they can just put their head to pillow and fall asleep. So that's sort of a concept that we refer to fast metabolizers or slow metabolizers of caffeine.

[Kevin]
Okay.

[Michelle]
And we used to think that that was kind of a genetic trait. But one of the most recent symposiums that I went to was in 2022. We now know that fast or slow metabolism, not just with caffeine, but with a host of other nutrients, has much more to do with microbial health than it does have to do with anything genetic.

Oh. So what that tells us is that we do have control as we improve our health, as we improve our diet, we improve our fiber intake, we improve the quality of teas that we drink and the diversity of types of teas that we drink, as well as the types of food and the quality of foods that we drink, we can actually build a healthier microbiome. And so some of that is exposure to fiber, which we know is the only real food that microbes have.

But we can also get exposure to a host of phytonutrients, which are very supportive to get health and our ability to build microbial diversity.

[Kevin]
Okay, so we've gone through caffeine. And basically the answer to that was there's a whole bunch else in tea that you get because it is a whole food and the process of steeping really helps. So I guess we can sort of delve into the details a little bit.

We're still noobs, but we can get in a little bit. So one thing I've definitely heard over and over and over and over again is that tea has antioxidants. And antioxidants are good because essentially the way I think of it is your body rusts, just like metal rusts.

I mean, it's not, but tea's got antioxidants. But is that it or is there more? Because I do recall you saying in two or three episodes ago, I forget when we were talking about, what was it?

I think phyto...

[Michelle]
Oh, phytochemicals, phytonutrients, yeah.

[Kevin]
I remember you saying that like tea had 800 or something like that and a lot. So what's in tea that can be good for us? Is it just antioxidants or what else?

[Michelle]
Yeah, so antioxidant compounds. Yeah, so phytochemicals are huge. And this, again, this is a word that wasn't used when I was in nutrition school.

We didn't even really know that term yet.

[Kevin]
It's a word I didn't use until a few weeks ago.

[Michelle]
And now you'll hear it everywhere. And I know when it started to become part of the vernacular when I was at conferences, I was like, what exactly is that? You know what?

So let me just hold that thought for a second. There's one thing that we should have talked about with caffeine and tea. And that's if you are drinking matcha.

I would be very remiss if I didn't mention this in the caffeine explanation. Matcha is tea that is reduced into a powder. And we take the entire plant.

And you are actually consuming the entire plant in one sitting, in one cup. Then you are going to get a jolt of caffeine when you drink that. But you're also going to get a jolt of theanine and a jolt of antioxidants at the same time.

So you're not going to experience that jolt the same way that you do from coffee. You're going to get more of a, we call it more tea drunk.

[Kevin]
Right, because you're getting more of the other stuff as well, not just caffeine. Okay, that makes sense.

[Michelle]
But that's still a great segue because you're getting more of everything all at once when you're drinking matcha, including phytochemicals, including theanine, including those other nutrients. So if we talk about what's in tea, there's about 75 to 80% of it will be water when you're drinking the tea. And then the rest is all plant compounds.

And those will include phytochemicals as well as other nutrients like, you know, vitamins, minerals, etc. But really a phytochemical is any compound that is made by plants. And it's really there to protect the plants from free radicals and things that might damage it, that may be exposed to from viruses, from bacteria, fungi, parasites, etc.

So it's really part of the plant's immune system. And the beautiful thing is then when we drink or eat tea, tea was one time in history was a food. And a medicine, right?

And before it was a beverage.

[Kevin]
I've eaten tea before.

[Michelle]
I know you have in Burma, right?

[Kevin]
I've had tea and salads in Myanmar. Yeah, it's delicious. Anyway, sorry, total.

[Michelle]
Yeah, so however you're taking your tea, you know, we can benefit from that as well. And it becomes part of our immune system and part of, you know, what protects us. But, you know, it's not exactly the same as the vitamins and minerals that may be present in foods.

Because those vitamins and minerals, they are actually essential to our health. And some phytochemicals are essential to our health, but not all of them, right? So some phytochemicals are vitamins and minerals as well, but not all of them.

We don't even know how many phytochemical compounds are. Like you can read so many articles and the number will be different because we're discovering them all the time.

[Kevin]
And that would make sense to me. Because, for instance, I mean, we wouldn't need necessarily the phytochemical that stops a particular fungus from growing on us like a tea leaf would. In which case, I mean, that kind of makes sense.

I'm simplifying it again because that's what I do.

[Michelle]
Well, you have to simplify it in order for it to make meaning for us. So basically, they're biologically active compounds in plants. They're very protective.

And every plant has its unique makeup of phytochemicals. So what the tea plant has is going to be different than what a tomato plant has or what your lettuce or your kale does.

Like science hasn't begun to identify them all, but when it comes to tea, basically everything in tea pretty much is a phytochemical that you're ingesting. And it also, so here are the main sort of nutrients that we'll have when we're drinking tea. We'll get an array of phytochemicals so we don't really know what they all are.

We'll have antioxidant or antioxidant compounds. We'll have a class of nutrient called methylxanthins or alkaloids, that includes your caffeine, but there are other types of methylxanthins other than just caffeine. And then there are other amino acids which includes your theanine, right?

[Kevin]
Okay, right.

[Michelle]
So when we're drinking tea, we're getting vitamins, minerals, we're getting enzymes, we're getting pigments, we're getting a little bit of carbohydrate, but not very much. That's just the structural integrity of the plant, right? So that would mean there's a little bit of fiber.

And if you're drinking matcha, you're getting a little bit of fiber, you're not when you're drinking tea. And then the essential oils are the volatile compounds that give them their smells and their flavors and things like that. So you mentioned free radical damage, right?

The fact that we're rusting, the same as a squeaky old part.

[Kevin]
So that happens- Oh, I've got a lot of squeaky old parts now, let me tell you.

[Michelle]
Okay. So antioxidants is a common term that people really understand because it's been part of our language for so many years. We now, you hear when I go to symposiums, we hear them talk about antioxidants less and we hear them talk more about phytonutrients and antioxidant compounds.

[Kevin]
Okay.

[Michelle]
But basically let's just use antioxidants because people know what that means. Basically, they're going to help us when we eat more foods that contain these compounds and teas are loaded with these compounds because it helps to prevent aging or sometimes it can even like repair a molecule that's become damaged and help to stop that rusting, stop that aging. So yeah, free radicals we get from breathing in air pollution, from processed food, from chemicals that might be lining packaging or fire retardants in our curtains and our carpets and our jackets, our clothing.

Like there's free radicals everywhere. Some of it's just simply by-product of normal human respiration. Our body produces free radicals and we exhale them.

So our exposure to these offenders are everywhere.

[Kevin]
There are also free radicals all over the political world. More and more free radicals these days. Sorry, couldn't resist.

[Michelle]
Thank goodness this is not a political podcast.

[Kevin]
No, I know, I just couldn't. No, but it's a dad joke podcast.

[Michelle]
You're so right, you're so right, you're so right. It's so funny. So, but how much polyphenols do we get in the tea leaf?

It's about 25 to 30% of our dry leaf is made up of all of these different polyphenols. So it's very, very significant. So how do we get from there?

So there's flavonoids that are types of polyphenols and poly, so polyphenols, flavonoids, these are these antioxidant compounds that I'm talking about. These are the little compounds that are like the little fighters that are going around and getting rid of the bad guys. And stopping or slowing or halting the aging process in our body and the resting that's going on.

[Kevin]
Yes, I need more of those.

[Michelle]
Right, and also, you know, helping our immune system get stronger and staving off disease. Like we know that we can put tea in a Petri dish with the antioxidant compounds from tea in a Petri dish with cancer and it kills it.

[Kevin]
Wow.

[Michelle]
So yeah, it's really, really cool. And we know within minutes, we know from EEG studies within minutes of consuming tea that we actually see compounds thanks to theanine crossing the brain and causing areas of the brain to actually light up on a brain scan. So it's that the message there that most people should take away is that these studies like this have proven bioavailability.

Bioavailability is really the key. Whenever you're taking something that you think is going to enhance your health, whether it's a pill or it's a food, it doesn't really matter what you take. What matters is what gets absorbed.

What can your body actually absorb and utilize? That's what matters. And we know that when we're consuming tea, we're getting all of this goodness and we know that it's readily absorbed.

And what we've learned from so many symposiums on tea and health and what's been published in the literature and talked about by scientists, and they're starting to study more and more of this, there's so many tea studies out there now, it's wonderful, that there isn't a more bioavailable beverage that we can drink that travels to every single organ system.

[Kevin]
So I have another question that's a little, that's kind of related, but it's also a little bit of off the beaten track. But you're talking about bioavailability and you've mentioned theanine a few times now. And on a bunch of, and you said that theanine is now being used or being experimented with in medicine for other uses.

But I have seen usually on clickbait, which automatically makes me suspicious. It should. That you can, yeah, exactly.

You can now get like theanine, just theanine capsules. And it says, oh, this will cure everything. It's all the best parts of tea and all that.

But what I'm hearing, and I wanna know, like it sounds like theanine might be a delivery channel, but if you just have theanine and not everything else that's in the tea plant, then just having theanine by itself actually isn't necessarily a good thing. Like you need kind of the whole package deal. Is that correct?

[Michelle]
You are a thousand percent right.

[Kevin]
Okay. Wow, first time for everything. That is the whole point.

[Michelle]
That is the whole point because it's the same thing when you take vitamin C by itself as a capsule, you're not going to absorb all of it, right? But you take other or, and the vitamin C is needed to be present in order for us to absorb other nutrients. It's the same way with theanine, which is why I call the theanine, the antioxidants and the caffeine, the Holy Trinity of nutrients.

There was this fascinating study that I read that they experimented on exactly that. So they had to test bioavailability, they tested subjects to see if they took caffeine alone, extracted from the tea plant, how does it absorb? The antioxidant compounds by taking the caffeine out, do we absorb them?

Taking out one of those nutrients, do we absorb the theanine? What we found is when you remove one of those three, the other two don't absorb as well. So it's really interesting that you kind of need that Holy Trinity to stay intact.

Without the theanine, we don't absorb the antioxidants as well and we don't utilize the caffeine, isn't something we should be afraid of unless we're over consuming it, right? It's a really, really beneficial nutrient to our energy and our cognition. We just don't wanna have it in a harmful amount without being imbalanced.

The antioxidants aren't nearly as bioactive without the theanine and the caffeine. The theanine isn't absorbed without the other two. So like, and that's kind of my whole case too with decaffeinating tea.

It's impossible to extract one nutrient from a food without it being at the expense of others. And so you're probably losing a lot of the goodness of the tea by trying to decaffeinate it. And then what's left isn't gonna absorb very well.

So you'd be better off just drinking an herbal tea, like a different plant that is naturally caffeine-free that's gonna have lots of other wonderful phytochemicals in it.

[Kevin]
Right, right.

[Michelle]
Yeah.

[Kevin]
Okay, so thank you. So I will not trust clickbait anymore. That's the end result.

[Michelle]
You did at some point?

[Kevin]
No, exactly, I didn't. But for anyone out there, don't trust clickbait.

[Michelle]
Clickbait's fun, but you have to still be a critical thinker.

[Kevin]
Well, of course, of course.

[Michelle]
A curious person. I click on clickbait all the time.

[Kevin]
Well, sometimes you can't help it. If there's some celebrity news or something, some gossip, you know, it's just so- Okay, digression, digression.

[Michelle]
What's your Achilles heel of clickbait? What will you click on?

[Kevin]
What will I click on? Oh, wow. I don't know if I can admit it.

[Michelle]
It's not porn, is it?

[Kevin]
No, no, I don't go on those sites that have porn clickbait. What is porn anyways?

[Michelle]
I don't even know what that is.

[Kevin]
What? Okay, wow, this has suddenly turned into a very different podcast. I will usually click on the weird, you know, man survived for 50 years with a nail through his skull or something like that.

Like, see this woman with 17 toes on one foot and how does she walk and what shoes does she buy? Like, it's stupid rubbish like that. And I know that it is.

Like, I click it knowing full well that this is just gonna be a waste of time. But I can't help it.

[Michelle]
Well, Montel Williams made an entire, not Montel, sorry.

[Kevin]
Exactly, exactly.

[Michelle]
So what's yours? No, I don't want to bash Montel. What's the other one?

[Kevin]
Jenny. Who's the guy that- Jenny. Geraldo or whatever.

[Michelle]
Maury Povich.

[Kevin]
Maury Povich, all of them. So what's your clickbait?

[Michelle]
What's- Do you know what it was during the pandemic? I'm almost afraid to admit this. I would get sucked in when, I would be scrolling through Facebook or Instagram or something.

And one of those Dr. Pimple Popper videos.

[Kevin]
Oh, yes.

[Michelle]
Oh, those are so- I would get sucked in and I would be so groused out, but I wouldn't stop watching.

[Kevin]
Oh, I know, I know. And occasionally you'd get like a big thorn or something and it just kept on going.

[Michelle]
And it'd be like, ew, ew, ew.

[Kevin]
But still so like, ooh, but I can't turn away. Yes, no, I've been guilty of that.

[Michelle]
But Dr. Pimple Popper is so nice too though, right?

[Kevin]
Like you just- Totally. But then you got, now the newest thing is, or maybe not new, but people faking those Pimple Popper things.

[Michelle]
Are you serious?

[Kevin]
Oh yeah, no, you see people- Oh man, you've just ruined it for me. Well, no, it's always obvious and they're always hilarious, but you see people and you'll see like a closeup. Once I saw like a closeup of an ear and the way the, and there were like sort of blankets all around the ear so you could only see the ear and you could very easily tell it was plastic.

And then you saw a rubber or something and then you saw some tweezers coming in and trying to pull. And they were trying to imply that there's some insect in this person's ear. But it was so obviously fake.

It was just ridiculous, but it was, that was pure clickbait. Now it was just ridiculous and dumb.

[Michelle]
That is.

[Kevin]
But somehow I know that it exists. So I watched it.

[Michelle]
Who has time for that? Seriously. Is that monetized?

Why would they do that?

[Kevin]
Well, it's clicks. It's weird. It's all about building your channel.

And you can start getting real- That's really what you wanna be known for? Advertisers. Well, hey, a click's a click, a click, you know, they're all, it's all turns up into money.

All right.

[Michelle]
All right, back on topic.

[Kevin]
Anyways, back on topic.

[Michelle]
I had to know.

[Kevin]
I had a question.

[Michelle]
Now we all know what Kevin's clickbait is.

[Kevin]
Exactly. Oh no, quick, we gotta get on topic quickly. Okay, so let's get back onto topic now.

Enough about clickbait. So you had just mentioned a couple seconds ago about if you wanna avoid caffeine, go for Tizans. And you said that Tizans have phytochemicals.

But I assume, but they don't have theanine, right? Like they just have the phytochemicals.

[Michelle]
No, there's theanine. The last time I took a deep dive on theanine, it's only available in the tea plant and some obscure mushroom.

[Kevin]
Okay, the tea mushroom. Okay, but there's still lots of good stuff in Tizans and herbal teas because they have the- Absolutely, absolutely, they're plants. Right.

[Michelle]
They're plants. They just don't, so any other, so when you see people toting a tea for cold and flu and a tea for inflammation and a tea for antifungal, like I'm thinking about tea for detoxing, tea for liver, tea for kidney, tea for eyes. That's because we have different phytochemical makeup in different plants.

So lavender is good for one thing. Chamomile is good for something. Turmeric is good for something.

What's different about the Camellia sinensis plant is we have this incredible combination of potent phytochemicals and antioxidant compounds and nutrients with the intense bioavailability that it travels to every single organ system and can potentially benefit every single organ system. So we lose that, any useful argument to target tea for this or that, and that frustrates the heck out of people when they ask me, what tea can I have for this? We really turn to that targeting when we turn to other plants that have different specific plant compounds.

There's something about humans that we're wired, that we want to have this problem and drink this tea for it. And people have difficulty buying it when I tell them just drink tea, like regular tea, make sure that it's really good quality tea made with good quality water and it will benefit every organ system. I always say when people are asking these questions, how much caffeine is in this tea and how many antioxidants is this tea?

It would be like going to the grocery store and looking at all of the apples and you've got your Granny Smith and your Macintosh and all of these things and saying, which one of these apples has the most vitamin C? Like nobody asks that question. It's a dumb question.

[Kevin]
I agree that it is a really dumb question, but I think part of this comes from like over the past, I would say maybe 70 years or so, 70 to 80 years, there has been something with food in general and nutrition in general, a bit of a categorization. You eat carrots for your vitamin A for your eye health and you eat an apple a day keeps the doctor away and you eat oranges only for vitamin C and this kind of compartmentalization of food, in which case we've all grown up with this. So I think there is a bit of a natural and it doesn't make sense, I agree.

And to say Granny Smith is better for you than a Fiji, which is better than a Macintosh, makes no sense. But I bet you there are people who have asked that question, like what, I bet you if you Googled, what's the best apple for me, there would be so-called experts saying, well, the, you know, whatever, Pink Lady Ambrosia is the best apple because blah, blah, blah, like it's the most nutritious. And it is a, to your point, it is something that we have to maybe take a step back and rethink and realize nutrition isn't necessarily, you know, that compartmentalized and it is the whole plant.

And, you know, you keep saying over and over what I've taken away from you is like balance and, you know, having a little bit of everything and keeping the balance.

[Michelle]
Keeping things whole, don't pull food apart. I think some of that reductionism that we see in science has to do with the way our culture has evolved in terms of how studies get funded. And T.

Colin Campbell talks about this in his book, Whole, and so does Marian Nestle in her book about food politics. And it's really fascinating, like nowadays, a scientist cannot get funding from NIH or other funding bodies in order to study something whole. They have to have a very specific hypothesis that has to be component driven.

We believe if there is more of this, then this will happen. Right, so, and that's how studies get funded now. So I think that this is just my own hypothesis and influenced by these greater people, much smarter than me, who actually are involved in research and in part of those circles, have said that we think that it's this influence by how science gets done.

[Kevin]
Right.

[Michelle]
It has influenced the messages that we now receive through media, through articles. You'll click on one of those click baits and it'll say a new study out of JAMA says blah, blah, blah. And then that influences how we start to think about things.

And Dr. Oz has made a very lucrative career out of this because he'll mention a nutrient and then everybody, I have friends that worked in supplement stores when we were in nutrition school and they would say that whatever Dr. Oz said on his show today, everybody came in and they sold out of it.

[Kevin]
Right.

[Michelle]
Like that week. And then people end up with this medicine cabinet full of isolated nutrients that they don't even remember anymore why they bought them and why they're taking them.

[Kevin]
What's this for? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Michelle]
And that's where we end up in trouble is when we start relying on isolated nutrients and we think that we're getting healthier by taking isolated nutrients, maybe you're getting some benefit from some of them some of the time, but not even close to what you would get if you didn't pull the food apart, you focused on whole and instead of focusing on that type of apple, look at the apple and say, how fresh is that apple?

How far did it travel? What was, where was it grown? Is it a good, is it a good apple?

Like, was it mass produced and in some monoculture or like, was it a good quality heritage farmed apple in its natural condition? Was it sprayed with pesticides? We need to look at the quality of things and instead of breaking it into its tiny parts.

[Kevin]
Right, right. No, exactly, exactly. Well, we've strayed a whole lot away from tea in this discussion, but that's good because we're looking at the whole story.

[Michelle]
Well, you know what? That's the point, right? That's my whole point.

When we look at things as whole, then we get healthier.

[Kevin]
Exactly.

[Michelle]
And tea is no different and tea is a food. The end.

[Kevin]
The end, there, done. Okay, done. Okay, cut, cut.

We're done.

[Michelle]
You know what? I love this though about us, Kevin. I love that we have these rich conversations and we don't, and yes, we stray out of the conversation, but I think that's, I think we're helping people more by being expansive in how we look at our food and our drink.

[Kevin]
To quote you, we're just being real.

[Michelle]
We're just being real, man. We gotta be real. Look for the real answer.

Why is that the case?

[Kevin]
Exactly. So I think, you know, I'd like to delve into a little bit of how some of these phytochemicals can actually impact us and our health. But I think it sounds like that's probably- But wait, there's more.

But wait, there's more. But I think it sounds like that's probably a much bigger discussion. So we should probably save that for another episode.

[Michelle]
You know what? I would love to do that. I would love to dive into that, but it is a bigger conversation because what I can do is I can share with everyone in another episode, you know, the most recent research that kind of do go by different benefits, cardiovascular benefits, cognitive benefits, et cetera.

I'd love to dive into that.

[Kevin]
I would love to hear that. But yeah, that sounds like it's gonna be pretty detailed. So let's maybe save that for the next episode if that's all right with you.

[Michelle]
Sounds great.

[Kevin]
Okay, so everyone just keep in mind of what Michelle has just gone through and next episode, we'll get into how some of these phytochemicals and the whole experience of tea can help you in very specific ways. And it's like hot off the press research. So I'm looking forward to that.

[Michelle]
Me too.

[Kevin]
Okay, so it's time for the joke.

[Michelle]
Oh, I forgot about that.

[Kevin]
That's something you probably want to forget about.

[Michelle]
I need a good laugh today, Kevin.

[Kevin]
This is my version of clickbait, my bad jokes. Okay, so there's a patient and goes into a doctor's office and says, doctor, I have a pain in my eye whenever I drink tea. And the doctor says, have you tried taking the spoon out of your cup before you drink?

[Michelle]
Oh my God.

[Kevin]
What? I've got another one if you want. Okay.

What kind of tea can't you take into space?

[Michelle]
I don't know, Kevin, what kind of tea can't I take into space?

[Kevin]
Gravity.

[Michelle]
You're a card and you ought to be dealt with.

[Kevin]
Exactly, exactly. Okay, well enough of the silliness. Well, Michelle, as always, thank you so much.

And I'm glad we finally have gotten an opportunity to speak about what your real passion is. I mean, I know nutrition is generally your passion, but as anyone can hear, tea is your lifeblood.

[Michelle]
The world's healthiest natural beverage when it's made with good quality water and it was made with good quality.

[Kevin]
Exactly. So thank you. And we will reconvene in two weeks to talk about the actual health benefits of tea and how amazing it is.

[Michelle]
Thank you. So be real everyone. And as we say at my company, BT's, love your cup.

[Kevin]
And that's it for me. And I will sign off with not only eat your greens, but drink your greens too. This has been Nutrition for Noobs.

We hope you're a bit more enlightened about how your fantastic and complicated body works with the food you put into it. If you have a question or a topic you'd like Michelle to discuss, drop us a line at n4noobs@gmail.com. That's the letter N, the number 4, N-O-O-B-S at gmail.com.

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We'll see you next time with another interesting topic. The views and opinions expressed on Nutrition for Noobs are those of the hosts. It is not intended to be a substitute for medical, nutritional or health advice.

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