The Best Filipino Tea: Banaba Tea preparation and Benefits

Banaba tea is one of our native tea drinks here in the Philippines. This tea drink can work wonders and has been proven as a medicine or treatment for the following problems:

a.) Diabetic patients having issues with uncontrolled sugar.
b.) Obesity and Weight issues.

Banaba tea came from the Banaba plant; this is how it looks like:


Weight Loss Benefits of Banaba

Like other tea drinks, the most important part is the banaba leaves which will be used in the tea making process. One of the most commonly asked questions is how Banaba tea can be a helpful weight loss drink? I did some detailed research on the health benefits of banaba tea. After you drink it, the chemicals in the leaves will help delay the storage of glycogen or sugars in your muscle. If you asked where this glycogen does came from? Simply it came from the food you eat. After you eat, your stomach and intestines would break down the food into pieces and extract nutrients. One of the most commonly extracted nutrients is carbohydrates. For example, sweet foods, rice and white bread are rich in carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates are one of the most important sources of energy for the body which will be used by your muscles to perform heavy-duty tasked. Sadly, not all persons do heavy-duty tasked especially if you simply sit all day long while eating a lot of carbohydrates and sugars. These are not used by your body at all. Every time there are carbohydrates, it will be converted to glycogen which will be stored in your muscle. However, your body can only store a certain amount of glycogen from the carbohydrates you eat and the rest will not be utilized. So where does this go? Guess what? This goes to your belly waist and stored as FAT. This is where you start to gain weight and in severe cases, you will become obese.

Banaba tea would be a great help to your weight loss efforts because it delays the storage and conversion of carbohydrates to glycogen thus it will not be stored in your body as fat. But what if you kept eating? At this first, several hours after drinking this tea, you won’t have a feeling of being hungry due to the delayed conversion of carbohydrates to glycogen. It is this feeling of hungriness that can gain you weight especially if you are not burning carbohydrates very hard (can be done using heavy activity like running. With banaba tea, this problem is solved. This works best if you combined drinking banaba tea and aerobic exercise for maximum weight loss benefits.

Where to buy and how to prepare banaba tea:

Native Filipinos in the province will simply pick up the leaves of this plant and use it as tea extract. However for most users, you won’t be able to see banaba tree in your neighbourhood. You should go to the shopping malls grocery section and look for banaba tea bags in there. Here in the Philippines, you can buy it in almost all big shopping malls. The most popular brand is this one:



The best preparation method:

1.) Pour one full cup with boiling water.
2) Put one banaba tea bags on it.
3.) Wait for 5 minutes to complete the brewing.
4.) Enjoy.

Unlike other tea, banaba tea bags can be re-used twice and still retain its flavour. It tastes good!