It’s hard for me not to get excited about tea. Strange sentence, I know, but I drink tea constantly. Green tea, white tea, herbal tea…I have an entire cabinet in my kitchen devoted to tea and tea-making supplies.

And I’m not alone. Tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world, next to water. Billions of people around the world drink tea on a daily basis. And aside from its wonderful variety in taste, tea offers us countless health benefits that we’re only just now starting to understand.

Green Tea Health Benefits

In the book 1,801 Home Remedies: Trustworthy Treatments for Everyday Health Problems, Reader’s Digest considers tea to be a Top Household Healer. Because of its many benefits, tea is one of the items you should always have on hand, and drink regularly. It’s not all that expensive, and based on the research below, it can help save you money on medical bills due to a healthier lifestyle.

It wasn’t too long ago that scientists began to study why Japanese women live so much longer than pretty much everyone else on earth. And not only do they live longer, but they suffer through a fraction of the health defects and cancers that most others experience as they age.

Although there are several factors that influence their longevity (such as diet, lifestyle, and genetics), many scientists believe that their high consumption of green tea plays a major role in how long, and how healthy, they’re living.

The main reason is because tea, especially the less processed green tea, is full of polyphenols, which are among the most potent antioxidants ever discovered. Antioxidants are the chemicals that block free radicals (which age and destroy our skin, as well as our DNA) and other molecules that damage our cells and increase our risk of cancer. The more antioxidants we can introduce into our diet, the healthier we’re going to be.