On August 30, 2008, Dr. Hassan Amjad, physician from Oak Hill, West Virginia, held the second Oak Hill tea festival in and outside of his office.  Dr. Amjad is a one-man tea evangelist, serving up to 20 different teas to festival attendees, and had this to say about our favorite beverage:

“Tea has a calming effect. People who drink tea are poetic. They can sit down and write a nice piece of literature. Coffee stimulates but doesn’t calm down. If you keep the brain stimulated all the time, it doesn’t relax. It burns out,” the author, physician and practitioner of natural medicine explained.

“Tea stimulates and coffee stimulates. There’s a misconception that tea is not strong enough. The amount of caffeine is the same in a cup of each. With tea, it’s a slow-release form. A coffee drinker wants another cup and another cup and another cup. Tea stays in the system, while coffee goes up and out of the system.”

Much as I agree with Dr. Amjad’s dismissal of soda as “liquid sugar,” and that tea is the “elixir of life,” I can find no source, reliable or otherwise, declaring that a cup of tea has the same caffeine content as a cup of coffee.  However, it would be irresponsible to dismiss Dr. Amjad’s well-documented claims for drinking tea due to erroneous information about caffeine.

Caffeine questions aside, the notion of a tea festival at your workplace or in your neighborhood, no matter how small, could and would make a difference, one person at a time.  Invite people to bring their own cups!

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Dear Readers,

On February 15, 2009, we received some photos of the 2008 Oak Hill Tea Festival.  Here they are:

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