Lots of drinks on the market today are generally off-limits to diabetics. Sodas, fruit juices, and certain kinds of milk can spike your blood sugar levels and make diabetes worse. However, that doesn’t mean all beverages that aren’t water should be thrown out. In fact, some beverages like teas are super beneficial for diabetics and can help straighten out problems caused by diabetes!
In this article, we’ll be highlighting seven kinds of teas with known scientific benefits for diabetics. If you have diabetes or are at risk for diabetes, please consider adding these drinks to your pantry.
1. Green Tea
Green tea is rich in a compound called epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). EGCG is said to encourage muscles to burn more glucose, preventing glucose from converting and being stored as fat around the body. Indeed, many studies discovered that people who drink green tea often tend to have a lower body fat percentage and smaller measurements, keeping diabetes at bay. If you didn’t already know, being overweight or obese increases your risk of diabetes at least sixfold, so it’s important to manage your weight!
A cup of green tea comes in at a mere 2.4 calories, making it the healthiest beverage to drink besides water. Feel free to drink as much tea as you’d like!
2. Black Tea
The pancreas is a small organ in the middle of your belly that’s in charge of producing hormones. One hormone called insulin is responsible for distributing blood sugar to different cells around your body. Over time, these cells start becoming resistant to insulin, causing the pancreas to pump out more and more insulin to keep up. Eventually, the pancreas wears out, leading to increased blood sugar levels in the body, thereby causing diabetes.
Black tea is said to reduce insulin resistance and inflammation caused by insulin resistance. It is also said to play an insulin-like role in the body, maintaining blood sugar levels and controlling carbohydrate absorption.
3. Chamomile Tea
Have you ever used a computer that hasn’t been shut down for a long time? Notice how as the days go by, it lags more often and sometimes becomes unresponsive? Well, your body works the same way. If you don’t go to sleep and allow your body to restore itself, some common functions end up being affected. One of these functions is blood sugar level control. Thus, it’s important diabetics have a good night’s sleep every day.
One way to ensure that is by drinking chamomile tea. Research has shown that a cup of chamomile tea can help prevent sleep problems for both diabetics and non-diabetics. These teas also increase insulin sensitivity and reduce inflammation, which will help alleviate the side effects of diabetes.
4. Ginger Tea
Ginger tea is packed full of spice and flavor and can be a hit-or-miss for some people. However, we highly encourage you to bear with it—it’s said to significantly lower fasting blood sugar levels in diabetics!
Fasting blood sugar levels measure the amount of sugar in your blood after fasting for at least ten hours and are a standard indicator of diabetes. The lower your fasting blood sugar levels, the lower your risk of diabetes.
People who drink ginger tea or consume anything with ginger in it regularly are discovered to have better glycemic control. Scientists theorize that ginger blocks enzymes in the body that metabolize carbohydrates, leading to increased insulin sensitivity.
5. Hibiscus Tea
Having diabetes is already bad enough. Dealing with the side effects of diabetes including increased risk of cardiovascular disease, strokes, and high blood pressure is even worse! Managing diabetes is extra important because you’re also keeping other dangerous diseases from taking over your body.
Thankfully, hibiscus tea does wonders for your heart health. According to the National Institutes of Health, drinking hibiscus tea regularly reduces blood pressure among diabetics, whether systolic or diastolic. Hibiscus isn’t just pretty on the outside—it’s also pretty on the inside!
6. Rooibos Tea
Did you know that rooibos tea isn’t actually tea at all? Instead, it’s an herbal infusion of a plant that can only be grown in South Africa—the rooibos. Drinking this concoction is beneficial for weight loss and thus beneficial for those suffering from prediabetes. It can either delay the onset of diabetes or reverse prediabetes altogether!
Rooibos helps reduce the negative effects of metabolic diseases like high body fat around the waist and high blood sugar levels. It also controls blood sugar levels, increases insulin sensitivity, lowers bad cholesterol and triglycerides, and so much more. No wonder this tea can be a little pricey!
7. Peppermint Tea
Last but not least is peppermint teas, which can indirectly help with diabetes by lowering stress. Stress can wreak havoc on your body and make diabetes negatively affect you more, so drinking peppermint tea to calm you down can restore some of your body’s natural balance.
You don’t even have to drink peppermint tea to feel its benefits. Why, smelling that enticing scent of peppermint is enough to reduce anxiety, anger, tiredness, and other negative emotions! That’s probably why peppermint scents in aromatherapy are so popular—the smell is enough to melt that stress away.
