The thyroid, a butterfly-shaped gland near the base of your neck, generates hormones and plays an important role in human development. When a person’s thyroid produces too much or too little hormone, the condition is known as hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism. While there is no standard diet for thyroid difficulties, a few items, including tea, may influence thyroid function in either a positive or negative way.
Caffeine in Tea and Thyroid Medication
Thyroid patients often use medicine to normalize their hormone levels. Caffeine in tea and coffee may interfere with the absorption of levothyroxine, a popular thyroid medication. Instead of avoiding all coffee, the National Health Service of the United Kingdom recommends just waiting 30 minutes after taking your thyroid medication before drinking caffeinated drinks.
While tea has much less caffeine than coffee, it nevertheless provides between 25 to 48 milligrams for brewed black tea and 25 to 29 milligrams for green tea. Caffeine levels in bottled tea may reach up to 29 mg. Herbal teas with no caffeine, such as ginger, chamomile, and rooibos, should not interfere with your medicine.
Tea and Thyroid Cancer
Thyroid function changes are seldom cancer, according to the National Library of Medicine. However, you should always see your doctor. It’s also worth noting that tea drinking may reduce the chance of thyroid cancer. The authors of one meta-analysis published in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Medicine in 2015 analyzed 14 trials including over 100,000 individuals, almost 3,000 of whom had thyroid cancer. The researchers discovered a robust link between increased tea drinking and a lower incidence of thyroid cancer.
In 2015, a short research of 113 people published in the European Journal of Public Health discovered that some herbal teas could prevent not just thyroid cancer but also other thyroid problems. Chamomile tea, in particular, exhibited this beneficial impact when drunk two to six times per week for many years. Sage tea and mountain tea, which are prepared from Balkan Peninsula plants, also lowered the incidence of these disorders.
Green Tea and Thyroid Function
According to one animal research, excessive green tea drinking may be harmful to thyroid function. Green tea extract was tested on rats at dosages equivalent to 5, 10, and 20 cups of tea per day. They determined that excessive green tea drinking might cause goiters, or thyroid gland enlargement, and endanger thyroid health. However, since the study was conducted on animals and few people consume such large quantities of tea, further research would be required to validate or refute these results. In 2014, the work was published in the Journal of the Bangladesh Society of Physiologist.