Yueyue: Drinking tea for health preservation is increasingly popular. Many people habitually keep a cup of "health tea" at hand, brewed with ingredients like hawthorn, goji berries, chrysanthemums, and other "medicinal" materials. Can these various health teas really be consumed daily? Are they suitable for everyone? Professor Wu, we would like you to explain this to us.

I have discussed this issue many times in previous programs: tea itself has a "constitution." The type of tea one drinks must align with their own physical constitution to complement each other and maximize its benefits.

From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, teas are categorized as cool-natured, neutral, or warm-natured. Green tea, yellow tea, and white tea are cool-natured teas. Most oolong teas are neutral, while dark tea and black tea are warm-natured. To be more specific, Pu'er tea aged less than five years or lightly fermented Tieguanyin are also cool-natured, whereas heavily fermented oolong tea is warm-natured. Just as teas vary, so do people. Human constitutions also differ—some people have cold bodies, some have hot bodies, some are deficient, some are damp, etc. Therefore, tea drinking should be tailored to the individual. Choosing the wrong tea may not only fail to achieve the desired effects but could also be counterproductive.