Who shouldn't drink green tea?

Green teas are among the healthiest natural drinks you can include in your daily diet. They have antioxidant properties, can boast an effective slimming effect, help regulate blood pressure, noticeably improve the condition of skin, hair and nails, support the digestive and immune systems, and help slow down the ageing process… There are countless reasons to reach for green tea regularly. But are there cases where drinking green tea isn't such a good idea? Who shouldn't drink green tea? We explain below.

Compounds that aren't for everyone

Green tea owes its wide range of health benefits to the vitamins and minerals it contains. Most of these are compounds that are good for everyone, such as vitamins C and K, B vitamins, magnesium and calcium. Beyond these, green tea also contains two less common compounds – theine and catechins.

Theine is simply another name for the caffeine found in tea leaves. Some varieties of green tea (such as leaf sencha and gyokuro, as well as powdered matcha) have a particularly high theine content. The precautions around theine consumption are the same as those for caffeine, since they are, in fact, chemically the same substance. Green teas high in theine shouldn't be consumed in large amounts by pregnant women or children. A good solution here is to choose varieties of tea that, due to their specific composition or production process, are naturally caffeine-free. One such tea is hojicha. Hojicha is a roasted tea that loses almost all of its caffeine content during the roasting process.

Green tea and the stomach

Who else shouldn't drink green tea? Green tea stimulates the production of digestive juices, so anyone dealing with stomach conditions should pay attention to how their body reacts to green tea. It really comes down to individual sensitivity. To avoid any stomach discomfort, it's best to drink tea and matcha on a full stomach rather than an empty one.