Yerba Maté tea is made from the dried leaves of Ilex paraguariensis, an evergreen shrub that grows in Central and South America. This Latin tea is said to brim with antioxidants, and new evidence suggests that it can bolster bone strength in postmenopausal women.
A study from Argentina compared 146 postmenopausal women, some of whom who drank one liter of yerba mate tea daily for five years and some of whom didn’t. The researchers excluded women whose health history put them at high risk for osteoporosis. Results showed that the yerba maté drinkers had 9.7 percent higher bone density in their lumbar spine and 6.2 percent higher bone density in the area of the thigh just below the hip joint than the women who didn’t drink the tea.
In another study women who drank Chinese tea also had higher bone density in these two sites compared to women nondrinkers of tea; the increases were 4.3 percent and 4.7 percent respectively.
