Smoking Tea – Health Benefits – Smoking Tea vs Drinking Tea – Legality – Making Your Own – Best Tea To Smoke – Conclusion
Smoking tea might not seem like the most obvious choice for using tea. Instead, making tea from it is the most popular use for it and what comes to mind for most people. Smoking tea however is starting to gain more and more popularity.
In Vietnam it became popular a few decades ago to start smoking green tea cigarettes, but recently it has become a trend in the US too.
It’s well known already that drinking and consuming tea has many health benefits, be that from green tea, olong, black or white tea. They all carry individual flavors and aromas that sets them apart.
Making tea from these leaves has long been a tradition in many Asian countries and is often related to rituals or ceremonies. But they were also used for smoking as well throughout these important moments. Note the same way we do it these days perhaps when we roll them up and light them. Instead they would be lit in small containers and the fumes left to fill the room.
Why Would Anyone Start Smoking Tea?
The reason you might want to start smoking tea instead of simply just enjoying it as it is most commonly, in warm water to be drinked is to have that feeling of inhaling smoke.
It’s often reported by people who smoke that the feeling of lighting the cigarette and then inhaling the smoke is a very relaxing process that is hard to replicate. The same technique goes for smoking tea cigarettes. You will however not be inhaling any of the harmful chemicals that are often present in the mainstream cigarette brands we have in the world.
The Health Benefits To Smoking Tea
As for health benefits for smoking tea, there is no concrete research or science published so far. So the evidence or benefits we are presenting is based solely on what people themselves are said to experience. It is likely that more and more research will be published as replacements for smoking are becoming more and more popular.
But as a short bullet list for the health benefits of smoking tea we have as following:
- Lowered anxiety
- Cognitive enhancement
- Better metabolism
- Great cigarette replacement
- Energy boost from the caffeine
Lowered Anxiety
It’s often reported by people that lighting a cigarette will help with a lowered anxiety. The act of smoking sort of gives you time for yourself to wind down and think for a second.
Drinking tea has similar effects and it seems like smoking tea will also help with anxiety much in the same way.
Cognitive Enhancements
Since tea, or in this case green tea contains something called L-theanine it is noted that smoking tea will provide you with a greater ability to use your body and not feel strained or uneasy.
It helps with memory, focus and even learning abilities. The studies that have been done researching this have however only done it with green tea, and here caffeine is present which is known to give energy boosts and enhance the focus.
The people saying they feel an enhanced cognitive ability has not yet been proven. It hasn’t been studied yet if L-theanine can be consumed when smoking tea, or if it’s easier for the body to do it by drinking tea instead. Drinking green tea is currently the recommended method for consuming these benefits.
Better Metabolism
It has for quite some time now been known that drinking tea, and especially green tea has an effect of boosting metabolism and making it easier for the body to process food and take the nutrients from it.
But tea is also known to help with burning fat and be a great additive in a weight loss diet. Tea is very rich in antioxidants, a very important property when trying to have a healthy body.
Cigarette Replacement
Like we mentioned before, smoking green tea cigarettes instead of the mainstream ones is a much healthier option for the body. You won’t have the harmful chemicals that cigarettes have and you will still get a calming and anxiety reducing feeling too.
You are still inhaling toxic fumes such as carbon monoxide but you are reducing your intake of the addictive nicotine found in cigarettes. It’s definitely a better option for the body, no research yet has however shown that it is a healthy option.
Energy Boost
As tea contains caffeine, it can provide you with the same effect and energy boost that a good coffee can too. But note that there seems to be a threshold where too much won’t do you any good.
We should also mention that there is also no concrete research on this topic that shows that you are able to take in any of the caffeine when smoking tea cigarettes. We are simply going off from what people have themselves been reporting.
Comparing Smoking Tea To Drinking Tea
On the topic of whether it’s better to smoke or drink tea we seem to have a pretty clear winner. Drinking tea carries a lot more health benefits to it compared to simply just smoking it.
Your body is able to withdraw more of the benefits from the tea as compared to simply just smoking the tea. There is also not enough research to support any of the proposed health benefits smoking tea is supposed to have.
No matter what you are smoking you are getting carbon monoxide into your body which can with time be a real issue for your body. The harmful properties that it contains will increase the risk for both lung cancer but also for mouth cancer. If used too much you will also start experiencing respiratory issues eventually.
There is a theory however where smoking the tea seems to win. That is when you want the caffeine from tea into your body in the most effective way. It’s believed that smoking tea is a more efficient way for the caffeine to enter your body and give you that energy boost.
Is It Even Legal To Smoke Tea
It is perfectly legal to smoke tea. It is starting to become a trend in the US for people to instead smoke herbal blends instead of regular cigarettes. That creates the perfect opportunity for introducing tea into the blend.
Just like it’s legal to buy and drink green tea or black tea, the same goes for buying tea cigarettes. You should however know that there are laws that differ from state to state about where you are able to smoke and also about secondhand smoking. Some areas might also prohibit smoking entirely, here the same goes for tea cigarettes too. A tea cigarette will be legally viewed more or less the same way as a regular cigarette.
Can You Make Your Own Cigarettes With Tea
It’s very possible to start making your own cigarettes with tea. You would simply buy the package of green tea, or whichever variety you wish and then roll it in rolling paper.
At this point it’s ready to be enjoyed and smoked. There are stores that carry pre packaged tea cigarettes. But the FDA is not responsible for regulating these cigarettes so no quality check is possible. There are still risks when smoking tea cigarettes, just like regular ones and research is still to be published and discovered.
What Tea Is Best To Smoke
The best and most common tea to be smoking seems to be green tea. Here there is a rich amount of nutrients that are able to be enjoyed. Green tea is rich in caffeine, and smoking tea seems to be a great and quick way of getting that caffeine into your body.
But there is otherwise no research showcasing that smoking tea has more benefits than simply drinking it.
As for smoking the tea though, you can either buy prepackaged tea cigarettes ready to be enjoyed, or you can buy blends that yourself will roll up and light. But buying only green tea and making your own blends is also very much possible.
Summary And Conclusion
As for concluding this article about smoking and drinking tea, there is a pretty clear winner. Drinking tea seems to be the most reliable option for getting the nutrients into your body and not missing out on any of them at all.
Smoking tea has long been a part of traditional tea ceremonies, but more to fill the room with the smell and aroma of the tea. It’s in more recent years that tea has been seen as a replacement for regular cigarettes, and used in the same manner.
One theory however shows that it’s easier for the body to take up the caffeine from tea when smoked, compared to drinking it. But with all smoking it comes with health risks too. You are inhaling carbon monoxide which can in large quantities develop irreversible damage to your body.
Additional Information
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