Health Benefits of Hot Yerba Mate Tea
Even if you are an avid tea drinker, you might not have heard about hot yerba mate tea. It's a South American tea that's incredibly popular in Uruguay and Argentina. It's made from the dried leaves of evergreen holly, a native South American plant. Drinking it can often be a sign of friendship, but it also has a lot of health benefits.
Yerba mate gives a nice boost of energy that is often described as being gentle. Even though it gives as much energy as coffee, it doesn't have the bad side effects from coffee, like caffeine jitters, loss of sleep, and high blood pressure. It's often used by athletes to increase performance and it is very helpful to people easily fatigued and wanting a healthy boost of energy.
It also increases mental functions and helps lift your mood and enhance your memory. Yerba mate contains caffeine in it which helps with alertness and productivity so you can do your best. But it also contains theobromine, a relaxant found in chocolate, and theophylline. The trio work together to stimulate the dopamine in your brain to uplift your mood and enhance your brain functions together. In fact, Tim Ferris, author of The Four-Hour Work Week, experimented with all sorts of brain-enhancing drugs and found yerba mate to be the best because it doesn't have a crash and is non-addictive. He says it is even better than smart drugs, which have a huge crash period later on.
Yerba Mate is also crammed with nutrients and vitamins. According to Be Brain-Fit, it contains high concentration of these:
- vitamin A
- vitamin C
- vitamins B1, B2, B3, and B5
- vitamin E
- calcium
- iron
- magnesium
- manganese
- phosphorus
- potassium
- selenium
- sodium
- sulfur
- zinc
So even if you've never heard of yerba mate before, it's definitely worth looking into and adding to your everyday life.