Health Benefits of Kombucha
Kombucha has exploded onto the health scene in the last decade or so. It doesn’t sound promising: a fermentation of sugary tea using a microbial ‘mushroom mother’ – and anyone who’s seen kombucha being made will have caught sight of the ‘scoby’ (an acronym standing for ‘symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast’) and marvelled at its resemblance to a jellyfish.
It turns out that there’s increasingly compelling evidence that drinking kombucha can be excellent for your health in a number of different ways. So what exactly are the health benefits of kombucha? Let’s have a look….
It's a potent source of probiotics
Kombucha could be excellent for your gut health because its microbial action is superb at balancing your gut microbiome, encouraging the proliferation of friendly bacteria in your intestines which protect your body’s immune system, regulate what’s released from the digestive system into the bloodstream, and potentially help with weight loss.
A recent medical paper concluded that the lactic acid bacteria present in kombucha may also have significant probiotic function.
Kombucha is full of powerful antioxidants
It’s increasingly normal for kombucha to be made from green tea, which offers even more health benefits than black tea. Chief among these is the protection offered by the impressive antioxidant levels found in green tea, which can help fight oxidative stress in our body’s cells.
Kombucha can also be made from other plants commonly used for tea, such as lemon balm, mint, lemon verbena or chamomile, all of which have antioxidant properties.
This report of research done in Serbia on lemon balm kombucha concluded it showed significant antimicrobial activity against bacteria, and that these effects were far more pronounced in the kombucha than in a conventional lemon balm infusion.
It may protect you from cancer
In a 2013 study, a group of Indian researchers concluded that kombucha helped prevent the growth and proliferation of cancer cells as a result of its high concentration of polyphenols and antioxidants.
It’s unclear whether the cancer-fighting properties of kombucha are down to the characteristics of the tea used to make it, or whether there’s an extra boost given to the anti-cancer qualities of the drink by the work of the scoby. More research is being done, but for now, it’s clear that drinking kombucha may be one of the tastier ways of protecting you against cancer.
In 2012, a study of rats with diabetes was conducted which concluded that when they were given kombucha tea, this had a pronounced healthy effect, especially for the healthy functioning of their liver and kidneys. The researchers went as far to suggest that the active ingredients found in kombucha could be looked upon as an excellent candidate for future application as a supplement for the treatment and prevention of diabetes.
Kombucha may also significantly reduce blood sugar and haemoglobin A1C levels, and increase the production of insulin. It can also delay absorption of bad (LDL) cholesterol and triglycerides, and significantly raise good (HDL) cholesterol levels, all of which makes it a very wise choice for diabetics.
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