Try Hibiscus Tea for Recovery and Heart Health
June 01, 2016Post workout, recover from training and improve your heart health with hibiscus tea!
When you're working hard at the gym or getting in intense training workouts preparing for an upcoming spring event you want to recover as quickly as possible from your workouts. While good nutrition, hydration, and sleep status are essential for recovering quickly, there are certain steps you can take to make sure that you're back on your feet and ready to train as quickly as possible. One great way to make sure you recover quickly from your workouts that's easy, convenient, and promotes your long-term health is by drinking hibiscus tea post-workout.
The hibiscus plant is a deciduous shrub that grows in tropical and subtropical regions around the world. It has beautiful red and white flowers, which when dried and brewed as a tea produce a delicious tangy non-caffeinated tea. Hibiscus tea is consumed traditionally in many regions around the world such as Central Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Not only is this tea delicious and refreshing, but it also has a number of substantial health benefits.
Hibiscus tea is rich in both vitamin C and minerals, which are in and of themselves great aides to exercise recovery, but the real power of this drink comes from its antioxidant content. Hibiscus flowers are packed with the antioxidant pigments anthocyanins found in other superfoods such as red wine grapes and acai berries, and the tea boasts such a concentration of these beneficial chemicals that it is actually considered one of most potent sources you can consume! With a little help from the vitamin C and minerals, the antioxidants in hibiscus tea can immediately go to work reversing the oxidative stress of your last workout, speeding your recovery and getting you back to working hard, faster.
In addition to this immediate benefit, hibiscus tea is also an excellent choice if you value your long-term health (and who reading this doesn’t?). As is well-noted with red wine grapes and other potent sources of anthocyanins, the oxidative stress these compounds buffer can go a long way towards reducing cell damage, which over time may delay the aging process. Every cell in our body accrues damage from exposure to everyday environmental stress such as sunshine, as well as from the body’s daily metabolic processes such as digestion and muscle contraction. These processes produce free radicals which are highly reactive compounds that immediately go to work causing damage and disarray. Our bodies do a great job of preventing and repairing this damage, particularly if we follow a healthy lifestyle, but no matter what some remainder slips past, and over time this residual damage accumulates, resulting in older, less functional cells. The antioxidants from plant foods we consume in foods and drinks such as hibiscus tea can immediately intercept new free radicals as they form, preventing the damage from happening in the first place. This buffering effect results in less total damage, meaning less will accumulate over time and our cells will remain younger, longer.
And if reduced oxidative stress isn’t enough, hibiscus tea has also been shown in recent research to be extremely heart healthy. In fact, one recent study found that consuming hibiscus tea several times per day reduced total blood pressure more than leading forms of prescription medication, and obviously without the side effects! Since heart disease is the number one killer here in the United States we can use all the help we can get, and hibiscus tea is a cheap, easy, and healthy solution that may help you get more out of your workouts along the way.