Why The Doctor Sent Her To Buy Tea

A single cup of tea can be comfort, but it can also be strategy. On today's episode I’m joined by Maria Uspenski, founder of The Tea Spot and author of Cancer Hates Tea, for a conversation that starts with her ovarian cancer diagnosis and opens into the surprising science and daily practice of using tea for recovery, prevention, and calm.

We get specific about what the research actually points to: polyphenol antioxidants across true tea (Camellia sinensis), why green tea gets so much attention, and what makes EGCG a standout compound. Maria explains the real-world differences between matcha and leaf tea, why Japanese green teas are often prized for quality, and how harvest timing can matter as much as the label.

Here's some of what we're covering:

• Why green tea dominates research and what makes EGCG stand out
• What counts as "tea" versus herbal infusions and why the distinction matters
• The main tea types: green, black, oolong, white, puer, yellow
• Simple rule for consistency: drink the tea you love most
• Teas for digestion, endurance, energy, focus, and nervous system support
• When to drink tea for health benefits and polyphenol bioavailability
• Adaptogens in cancer care support and favorite options like ashwagandha and tulsi
• How to buy fresh tea, taste before investing, and store by tea type

If you’ve been trying to “do the perfect anti-cancer diet” and feeling overwhelmed, this is your reminder to keep it simple and sustainable. Perhaps simply start with a daily cup of antioxidant-rich tea!

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More about today's guest & how to connect with her:

Maria Uspenski is the founder and CEO of The Tea Spot, a Certified B Corp and Public Benefit Corporation dedicated to empowering wellness through tea. An MIT- trained mechanical engineer, Maria holds multiple U.S. patents for Steepware® innovations that modernize tea preparation and make daily wellness rituals more accessible. Her journey began after discovering the profound impact of whole leaf tea on her own recovery from illness — an experience that shaped her mission to bring the health benefits of tea to more people through science- backed, functional blends. A recognized tea industry leader and wellness advocate, Maria has been featured in national media and has lectured widely on the role of tea in preventive health. She is the author of the best seller "Cancer Hates Tea" (2016) and co-author of "101 Teas to Steep Before You Die" (2025). She continues to lead The Tea Spot with a deep commitment to innovation, education, and social impact.

👉 Website: https://www.theteaspot.com/

👉 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theteaspot/ 

👉 Books: 101 Teas to Steep Before You Die & Cancer Hates Tea

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Ground and Root Podcast. I am your host and holistic cancer dietitian Dion Detraz. I am so excited to be here with you today. I have a very special guest. As many of you know, one of my goals with this show is to bring on other people to interview. Some of those people are experts in the world of holistic or natural therapies or integrative tools, as well as stories from people who use many of the strategies we talk about on this show to support their recovery. And this month we are focusing on the hallmarks of an anti-cancer diet. So I felt like this was a perfect person to bring in in this theme because she not took this to heart, obviously, in her own recovery story, but she also ended up creating a business out of it afterwards. So I think this is really a beautiful story to highlight this month. I'm gonna give just a very quick intro to welcome Maria onto the show and then let her tell you more about her story. But we have Maria Usbenski with us today. She is founder of the Tea Spot and author of several tea-related books, including Cancer Hates Tea and co-author of 101 Teas to Steep Before You Die. She also has a new book coming out this summer that I had the honor of receiving an early review of, and I'm excited for that to be out in the world as well. She started the Tea Spot after experiencing personally the health benefits of tea during her cancer recovery. And then she's made it her mission to bring the benefits of tea to more people. So obviously, we're gonna talk about tea and hopefully it's gonna expand beyond because we've already talked a little bit about the benefits of green tea and much. I think these are sort of the more researched one, but there's so much behind tea that I'm excited for us to dive into. So without further ado, welcome Maria. I'm so happy to have you on the show today.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Thank you. I'm really so pleased to be here.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Great.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

I'm a big fan of this podcast, and it this is truly so right up my alley.

Maria’s Cancer Story And Tea Roots

SPEAKER_02 2:08

Oh, thank you, Maria. I appreciate that. Why don't we go ahead and just start with your story, maybe even like before Tea Spot? Just tell us a little bit about you and you know when you were diagnosed and kind of what your journey has looked like to where we are today. Yeah.

Researching Tea After Recovery

SPEAKER_01 2:24

So I am, I don't know how far to go back. So I do come from a tea drinking family. My family has Russian roots and tea, but really always black tea was always a part of even evening get-togethers. So it's interesting when people talk about caffeine intolerance. I'm thinking, wow, we were drinking black tea after dinner almost every day. And somehow it didn't stop my growth or prevent me from sleeping. However, now I do feel on that note a little more sensitive to caffeine. So I only drink decaffeinated teas after about 5 p.m. But aside from that, I grew up in an artistic family. I grew up around a lot of musicians and singers and dancers. And I also went to school for both piano and for ballet for the first part of my life. And then I got injured as a ballerina and was sent to a high school across the ocean in France, where you live. And I was very resentful about being there, but I did get my French high school baccalaureate degree in math and physics, and then came back to the States. And now I'm very grateful for my time in France in retrospect. But I came back, went to an engineering school, worked for IBM for a decade, and then started my own business and sold that business after eight years. And within two years of selling that business, or maybe within a year of selling that business, my dad died of heart disease very suddenly. And then two years after that point, my mother and I both developed a cancer, ovarian cancer. And so that was, of course, a whole different route that my life took for a few years. My girls were in middle school, and my only goal at that time was to see them get through high school. That was kind of my biggest aspiration. And my little one, knowing this, didn't tell me blatantly, but actually accelerated her getting out of high school in order to, she got out in three years to help me meet my goal because we're very goal-oriented in this family. So now, fast forward 21 years, 22 years coming up on this summer from when I got my no evidence of disease prognosis, both of my daughters who became classical musicians, are now working at the T-spot. So thank you, COVID, for that. And it's really my biggest privilege and pleasure to be able to work with them every day. They are outstanding human beings and just out amazing at their jobs as well, and very good with people. So it's a real honor to be able to know that my business will have them moving forward, regardless of how I go or when I go. This is an important, a very nice move. And in fact, it's now the year of the horse, and I'm drinking my favorite horsey tea or black puer. But we have discussed that the year of the horse, it's the year of the fire horse, it's the young fire horse, is very much about change and fast energy. And so they're both embracing the fact that it's kind of a time for them to be able to show themselves more in the leadership of the company. So that's a fun moment that we're all at. But back to learning about the health benefits of tea, of other teas, other than just black tea. And I might make a tiny segue just to mention that green tea is what comes up in the literature most, most often. And there are two good reasons for that. First of all, the catechin polyphenols. So all teas, be it black, green, oolong, white, puer, have about 240 milligrams of polyphenol antioxidants per two grams of leaves that you would steep up. So the same total amount of antioxidants. However, green teas are heavier in the catechin polyphenols, which are, which include EGCG, so kind of the real cancer-fighting stars, so to speak. However, they also get more of the limelight in their wellness, in the wellness space, because it's the Japanese who have been very good since World War II. And in particular, it's a study that came out taking a look at women who had breast cancer after the bombing of Hiroshima, that showed that those who drank three or more cups of and they all drink green tea, green tea per day, were virtually immune to the effects of radiation if they weren't taken out by first radiation or you know, hit. And that to me was enough to say I at the time thought that my cancer was entirely environmental, that I must have been living near something god-awful, and had no idea that it might potentially have some emotional ties because my lifestyle, I thought, was perfectly active and clean and all those good things. But it's the Japanese who only drink green tea who have done the bulk of the research. So a lot of the studies are focused on that. These days, there's a lot more study coming out of India and China. And in China, of course, the majority of teas produced and consumed are also green, but there's a lot of focus on the puer teas from Yunnan, which is what I am choosing as my kind of personal signature year of the horse tea. One of the reasons being because that it kind of smells horsey. So that makes it fun. But it's also very steadying. If you're in a high energy, high fire year, this one is very steadying in terms of its energy. So I digress, but I learned a lot about the health benefits of tea. Honestly, it was a doctor who simply said to me, You might go across the street and try some tea. And there was a Citibank building across from the hospital where I had just gone, and had this wonderful little, there were a chain of shops. I think there's probably only one left these days, or maybe two in Boston and Providence. This one was in New York, and it's called Tea Lux. And they just they had a lot of whole leaf teas, and it was the first time that I'd walked into a shop like that, and I was just blown away. And the person behind the counter, when they saw me, said, What is it? Why do they send all the cancer patients over here? They didn't even make the connection, and they were somewhat disappointed to be entertaining cancer patients instead of just good-looking people who'd walked off of third or Lexington's.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Of the, you know, the doctors at the cancer clinic telling people to go over and start drinking tea. I'm actually quite impressed by that, especially 20 years ago because that's how long it was.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

Totally agreed. And I think it may have stemmed from a complaint that I made about the coffee.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

That's coffee, it's just terrible in here. And they're just like, oh, you go try some tea. And there's a good place across the street.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

Yeah. I love that. Okay. So that was kind of your obviously you had a background in tea. Like tea was a normal part of your life, but that was that is that when you sort of dove into the more specifically, I was still more focused on just recovery.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

And I was really just listening a lot to what I was being told by people who knew a lot more than me. Frankly, I really dove into tea right after in a huge way. And that was it's very scary. And I think you've even spoken about this in your podcasts. I know I've heard about this somewhere. It's very scary when all of a sudden you get your no evidence of disease. Obviously, it's the most grateful day of your life. Yeah. However, you're thinking, okay, my body has failed me in a big way once. Granted, it stepped up to this challenge to get to where I am today. But, you know, I you feel like, okay, I'm I have this demerit. I have this, I don't want to call it a handicap. I have this, but I have this, I my body could be prone to getting this again. And they make that very clear that this is not the end game. This is just the beginning of a whole new chapter. And I got very focused, and you're feeling slightly better day by day. So you do have more energy. I am very analytical by nature, and I love to read. So I just did as much research as I could. And of course, this is, you know, before there were tons of information on the internet, but you could still get to a lot of academic papers on the health benefits of tea. And there was already a pretty great critical mass of them, but more and more each year. And it was very apropos, very of the moment at that time. So I think I also hit that wave at the right time. Similarly, there weren't a lot of great tea shops like this one that kind of blew me away, tea luck. And I thought this is interesting. They make it very clear that fresh, high-quality whole leaf tea is what's important. And in particular, I want these nice, very potent Japanese green teas and matches, which in general at that time we didn't have a lot of. Now you can't walk into a cafe without hearing someone order a matcha latte. And it's probably comes from pretty good quality matcha. But I thought this is unfortunate that in my country, people who are faced with the same challenge as me don't have great access to great teas. And literally, I did not expect to start another business. Never in a million years did I expect to start a tea business. My background was intact. But next thing I know, I'm lying in bed and I go, How'd this happen? I have employees. You know, all of a sudden I had a tea business because frankly, I would have shouted off every rooftop to every female, look, here's this wonderful, inexpensive substance, which can not only help your body from a molecular standpoint, but really does make you feel good and brings wonderful steadying energy into your life. And for me at least, and for many others, I believe it's a much more palatable way to get your caffeine in during the day, your energy lift without compromising your more quiet and focused moments. And then most importantly, your rest at the end of the day.

Matcha EGCG And Japanese Green Tea

SPEAKER_02 13:25

I was just thinking of a couple of questions to follow up, and I don't want to get ahead of myself. So one, I'm gonna take it one like little sidetrack question because I have also seen in the research, and we're gonna move on from green tea eventually, but since we've talked about it already, I have also seen in the research that the Japanese varieties of green tea do seem to have higher concentrations of the catechins, higher concentrations of EGCG. Is that accurate? Which is that something that you've also seen and you would recommend if you're gonna do green tea, you do Japanese varieties.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

So let's start first with matcha versus leaf tea. So matcha, of course, being a powdered tea does have about three times more EGCG than any green leaf tea, whether that's from China, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea, or Japan. Okay. The Japanese, and then the second piece, I would really have to say the Japanese green teas, Japan focuses very much on quality. How to say this. Japanese green teas are definitely higher in chlorophyll. It's less uh wildly sunny there than it is in many parts of China where green tea is grown. And so when your plant is deprived of light, it produces more chlorophyll looking for sunlight. And so, in particular, there are even Japanese green teas, the really high-end gyokuro leaf green teas, that are shaded the last few weeks of their growing season in order to make them. Again, people weren't looking to make them more chlorophyll-heavy for health reasons. It's because it produces this outstanding umami flavor and wonderful round mouthfeel that the Japanese so appreciate in a lot of their cuisine and in particular in their teas. So, yes, Japanese green teas are definitely almost always higher in chlorophyll. Matcha is definitely two to three times more pronounced in EGCG than any leaf green tea. But after that, the next most important factor is how early in the spring was it picked? So after the plant has been dormant, and in both Japan and China, the plants are dormant. They have a winter, they don't produce year-round as they do in some tea growing regions like Sri Lanka or Colombia. But the after they're dormant and the first plants come up, we know that always from our garden as well. Those first shoots on the trees in your garden are the most vibrant, and they are the most endowed with all of these polyphenol antioxidants. So I'd have to say that after the matcha difference, really the difference is how early was your tea picked? And there are some very catechin-forward Chinese green teas, but then anything, for instance, that would end up most probably in your Moroccan green tea is picked much later because that then gets blended with mint, and people are less pick fussy about what that green tea is. But yeah, in general, if you get a fresh early season and they're the Japanese green teas are also pretty well documented in terms of there are actual terms like shincha means a very early sencha. So you know that if you're drinking a shincha, that it is probably higher in polyphenol antioxidants than something that is a sencha that's made later, et cetera, et cetera.

Real Tea Types Explained Clearly

SPEAKER_02 17:07

Okay, my gosh. There's so many nuances. No, I appreciate it though, just because you're obviously an expert in tea. You've taken a lot of time to research all of this. So I appreciate so much. Every day I learn more. Yeah, I love that. Okay, let's start, let's move forward because I want to think about, I feel like in the cancer world, we definitely talk about green tea a lot. Like that, most people have heard that to some degree, that it's a good thing to do. But there are a lot of different types of tea, right? So would you take a minute just to kind of bring us all to the same level of understanding of what are the, you know, the different teas, what are the general differences of tea? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

And especially in North America, one of the distinctions that is very delicate to make is we tend to call a lot of things tea. So after Cancer Hates Tea came out in 2016, I did a lot of talks on tea and health in the next couple, two to three years. And I would often ask at the end, what is your favorite tea? And here I've given a talk for you know 45 minutes on the health benefits of tea. And people will undoubtedly raise their hands and say peppermint, chamomile. And you're like, oi, okay, how do I, how do I broach the fact that this is not tea? Technically, and there are, and there were many more people in the tea industry who were very even borderline rude about letting people know that's not tea. If you call it tea, it's tea. For you, it's tea. But yeah, technically speaking, to be tea, you need to come from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant. And then you're right, it's there are still a gazillion varieties, thousands of them. And the five major types are six major types we say in 101 teas are puer tea, which is the aged and fermented tea, which is bacteriologically active, which has amazing benefits for digestion. So that is a very favorite morning tea. And at the tea spot, we actually blend that into a lot of our breakfast blends, and people become very devoted fans of them because they get used to that nice digestive push in the morning, so to speak. Then there are black teas, which are more oxidized than green teas. So a green tea leaf, you can pick it in the morning and it just doesn't oxidize. You dry it out and you have tea by the evening. A black tea sits out there and oxidizes longer. Think about slicing an apple or a banana. They turn brown. So does a tea leaf, right? It doesn't start out brown on the bush. It's it on the tree, it starts out obviously as a nice, fresh green leaf always. But the longer you allow it to oxidize, the darker it gets. So then that black tea category. Then we've got oolong teas that are really range in oxidation between 20 and 80%, with black teas being more than 80%, green teas being less in general. And oolongs are very complex and have the most intricate kind of manufacturing practices associated with the production of the tea after those leaves are wilted and taken off and have oxidized a bit. And the countries that are best known for oolong teas are Taiwan and China. But now places are starting to make them more all around the globe because it is such an interesting category. And then, of course, we've got our green teas and then white teas, which are literally plucked the morning before, oftentimes the tea leaf would unfurl is when white silver needles are plucked. I don't know if you've ever looked at that tea, but those leaves are nice and long and almost still kind of curled up and have a lot of peach fuzz on the outside. They're just, they literally look like they were frozen in time from a very fresh tea shrub. So all of those different types, and then there's a type that we practically don't speak about in the States, and that's why I don't talk about it in Cancer Hates Tea, but we do because we're very by the book in 101 teas, yellow tea is a special category in my mind of green tea, but we did call it out because technically it is a separate type of tea. So all of those teas, again, have a similar amount of polyphenol antioxidants. I feel that just getting tea into your everyday is important. If you aren't used to drinking tea every day, drinking an umami astringent fresh Japanese green tea first thing in the morning could make your stomach turn. It certainly did mine when I First tried. And now I crave it. And it's the first thing that I drink every morning. But I feel that what I tell people is drink the tea that you love the most because it's the one that you'll drink the most of. If I'm drinking down that green tea by the shot glass, like it's medicine, and I can drink three mugs of my juicy black tea with no problem, I am ultimately going to get a lot more benefit from that black tea than I would from that one little shot of green tea that might taste like wheatgrass to me.

SPEAKER_02 22:35

Yeah. I love, I really love that recommendation. I think it's so much more accessible to people because even though I feel like a lot of people I work with like green tea and it's sort of okay to bring it into their routines, there are some people who really don't, or it upsets their stomach, or every time they, you know, they drink it, they get heartburn or different things. And so I think the broadening it to you're still gonna get a lot of these antioxidants and health benefits by drinking, you know, these six different varieties of tea really opens up, I think, the possibility of getting tea into your routine.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Absolutely. And the other thing I might add is if you're in that category of person who thinks they don't like green tea and maybe never will, I would recommend that you go to a tea place if you have within your geography a Japanese tea room that you could go to that you know they're going to steep it correctly. You might try that because they are finicky and they can go bitter very quickly. Or the other two recommendations that I would make are again maicha green tea, is the one that's with the puffed rice and some roasty bits. That's a lot easier to pallate on your stomach. And then these days, good quality matcha is available everywhere, and you can stir matcha into yogurt, you know, anything, and not really need to deal with the adverse kind of taste effects, so to speak.

Choosing Teas For Energy And Gut

SPEAKER_02 24:04

That's great. I yeah, that's a good reminder. You could even put matcha into a smoothie or something, right? Like it doesn't have to be a cup of hot tea per se. Yep. Would there be time? So I love, I actually wasn't aware, at least personally, I haven't ever tried the fermented tea that you mentioned. So, what I would love to hear from you too, and just in general, obviously, when we're thinking about cancer prevention, we think green tea, but just general health benefits and longevity and gut health and all these things are important, immune system, all the things. So, would there be certain types of tea that you would go to for different things? Like you mentioned, the fermented one for gut health, or what are kind of the go-tos for you?

SPEAKER_01 24:44

So, definitely the fermented one for aging fermented, so puer tea, pu- apostrophe, e-r. It's named after the village, a village in its region, which the whole region used to be named. That is bacteriologically active. It's a pre-probiotic. Yes, it's great for digestion. And if you don't love the taste of that, if it's got a little too much horse in it for you, there are plenty of blends that have that tea in it that make it a lot more palatable. Green tea is excellent for a little bit of energy over a long period of time. I was surprised about a, I don't know, a decade or 15 or God knows how many years ago, the Garmin cycling team was training in Boulder for the Tour de France, or they're based out of here, we're based out of here. And somehow I met their doctor who made their secret tea. So they had an energy tea that they drank, and it was green tea based. And I was like, aha, very interesting. So here's this Chinese doctor, and of course, the tea is Chinese green tea based because it's your endurance tea. So whether you're an endurance athlete or a busy mom or a busy professional, you name it, that endurance beverage, aka green tea, is an excellent way to get you through your day, probably also benefiting you in drinking it in smaller doses, kind of throughout the day, right? Because those polyphenol antioxidants are most bioavailable on an empty stomach. So drinking tea with your meal isn't terribly useful from a health perspective. First thing in the morning, and then between meals is really when tea should be consumed if you're after it for a health benefit. And so kind of dosing that throughout the day just as part of your hydration, just throw a few leaves into your tea bottle and a water bottle, excuse me. And then white tea is the one that monks really focused on because it allowed them to stay barely away for long awake for long periods of time. And I love that tea in the afternoon when I do need to focus, but I definitely don't feel that I need an energy lift. And it just with white tea, what the Chinese say is it's the taste between your teeth. It's really the qi that tea brings you. And there are a few white teas that I've tried in my life and a few raw puer teas. So there are green puer teas that are a huge favorite of mine, that literally, and I've probably only had certainly not five cups in my life, but probably three, four-ish cups of tea in my life when I have had a sip and literally it felt like it just changed my whole psyche. Or it just took you out of yourself to an incredible place. And yes, there are molecules in tea which are psychoactive. And I don't mean that it made you feel crazy, it just made you it made you immediately centered. It was half an hour of meditation and one sip, essentially. And that to me is incredible. When you can watch that in it, and I was even in a power class last week. I did a week-long power stage in Paris with a bunch of tea professionals. And there was one woman that I sat next to from Switzerland. One of those few cups of tea that I had was at that class. And when she drank it, she burst into tears. And every time she drank it, she burst into tears. And I'm like, what is wrong with you? We became friends over the week. She said, It's too much tea for me. You know, you can't help but recognize that it's in there.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

That's incredible. I've never heard that before. Wow. So it's interesting because this, you know, this month we're focusing on plants and food, like the ways we nourish ourselves to help us stay healthy and cancer free. But the month before, which is when we're filming this right now in February, we're talking about nervous system and stress and emotional health. And tea can based on what you're telling me here, in addition to herbal infusions, of course, but like teas can serve a role there too, right?

Immune Protection And Preventive Mindset

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Absolutely. I feel that certainly I came to tea for its chemical, biochemical benefits to my system, right? You wanted it to protect you, to enhance your immune system, to bolster it after it's been knocked down by disease and chemotherapy, et cetera. And that's what brought me to tea and what we do know that it works so well for. And oddly, 20 years ago, that's or sorry, when my book came out 10 years ago, that's what I would have focused on primarily. But now that knock on wood, I have continued to be disease-free for another decade, I am kind of appreciating more those other benefits of tea. And perhaps certainly having listened to your February broadcasts on your podcast, it has just made that all the more apparent and vivid in terms of people because I have a tea business, of course, we also wonder about, we only want to serve teas that are going to make people's lives better. But people repurchase tea for two reasons. Because it tastes great and because it makes them feel good. And yes, feeling good is not only the physical, oh wow, I feel, I feel like I haven't had a cold. That actually is a very interesting anecdotal piece of evidence, which of course I don't have any immediate research on in my company, but which is certainly very well documented in the in the medical literature. And that is the lower incidence of colds and even colds and flu in people who drink tea regularly. So over the course of my company's history over the last 20 years, so we're between 35 and 40 people, but probably I've had about 100 employees who have come and gone. And people come, they start drinking tea. It's free, it's there. There's a lot of them, they taste good. And guaranteed, more than half of them about nine months later, go, you know, it's nuts. I haven't had a cold since I came to work at the tea spot. That's interesting. In researching this cancer versus tea book that's coming out this coming summer, of course, I added an antiviral section, right? Because people did turn to tea, and more than 98% of COVID cases in China were actually dealt with in terms of herbal medications and tea. But one of my favorite studies far predates COVID, and it's about children who grow up on tea gardens in Japan versus children who grow up in regular villages and cities in Japan that aren't on tea plantations. And so it is a population study. It doesn't say, oh, these kids on the tea gardens are drinking three to five cups of tea a day. It doesn't have that type of quantitative measure in there, but it does talk about days of absences from school. I don't know if the tea garden parents are simply more stringent about not missing school, but they miss three times less school than the other kids. So it just that whole cold and flu correlation, and there they were really focusing on influenza. So these kids were not catching flu, which is very interesting.

SPEAKER_02 32:30

So, right. So just another, and when we think about the health benefits, a lot of it is preventative, is keeping you strong, keeping you healthy, so that you can fight off the things you might be exposed to in the world. Even that very original study you mentioned with the Japanese after the radiation exposure and how the green tea protected them from the radiation. So I think we can really think of it as a protective way we nourish ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Yes. And I haven't gone completely TCM Chinese herbal medicine and like not by a long shot. I do all my doctor's appointments here in Colorado and very much Western medicine people, but practitioners. But one time I recall working in China with a colleague, a Chinese colleague, and she said, Oh, I need to go. I have a doctor's appointment. I said, Oh my goodness, what's wrong? She said, Nothing's wrong. And you're like, Okay, then why are you going? I'm going to the doctor, you know, and I and just that concept that I learned uh 20 years ago or so, that you go to the doctor just like you would go get an oil change on your car or make sure that your tire pressure is good, or get your bike tuned up. And that to me, it sounds so naive because we have gotten a whole lot better about preventative medicine in the US in the last few decades. But that to me was a real mind trip that, oh, wow, you know, this doctor's collecting money and my friend's not even sick. But no, it's such a wonderful philosophy. And then when she came back, I asked, so what happened? You know, he asked about just how I've been feeling, my bowel movements, my relationship with my husband, you know, you name it, all of these things that could point to what could potentially lead them to want to look a little more in depth on a certain course. He took her pulse first. He decided that it was that they didn't need to do a blood test after having gone through that initial screening at that visit. So yeah, I think ultimately it could save us a lot of time, money, and worry in the in Western countries if we did focus a lot more on just knowing where we are every day, waking up in the morning and saying, you know, even little things like these biometric, my cardiologist now, I'm not wearing it, but likes for me to wear my aura ring. So that's free HRV data hanging out. And that biofeedback is so very valuable. Like you sometimes don't make the correlation that oh, if I stay up and work until 11 or midnight, it's not going to be as happy a morning when I wake up the next day.

Adaptogens For Stress And Resilience

SPEAKER_02 35:21

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's yeah, it's it's the preventative piece, I think, particularly when we look at traditional Chinese medicine or East Asian medicine or some like older or even Ayurvedic philosophies, like older philosophies than our kind of modern day Western medical approach, is looking deeper at the rhythms of the body and really thinking about wellness as a root cause piece, as let's keep the qi flowing, let's keep things optimal so you don't create a problem down the road, hopefully. And that is a very different way to think about medicine. In my opinion, a much healthier way to think about medicine. But yeah, that doesn't surprise me that in China that's what she was doing. That's beautiful. Okay, let's talk about buying tea. Now you have a tea shop. So this is also very, you know, you're very versed in this. So buying tea, what are the things that we really need to look for? We want to maximize the benefits, the health benefits, or even the calming, the stress-supporting benefits of tea. What should we be looking for? I'm assuming we're not just going to the store and grabbing like the bags of tea. Tell me what we should be keeping an eye out for.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

So if you're purchasing tea for wellness, as wellness as your motivator, you want to look for the freshest tea you can get. And that's difficult sometimes to ascertain when you go to the grocery store because everything's packaged up and you don't see anything. So I would advocate, again, not all of us have bulk tea shops where we can go in our town. I would advocate going to kind of as nice a tea shop as you can find with as much diversity in it as you can find. And first just tasting teas, because it's a lot cheaper to buy a cup or a pot of tea instead of investing in a quarter pound or a pound, and then not even knowing whether you're necessarily brewing it perfectly at home. That's kind of a I don't like to take that kind of financial risk. Even if it's for 10 bucks, I'd rather pay three and get a cup of tea and know I love this or I'm done with this. So I would definitely advocate starting and unfortunately not at most chain kind of coffee shops, but at a place where you see that you've got people who are brewing leaf tea. And that doesn't always mean that it's not in a sachet. People oftentimes get full leaf tea and put them either in pyramid sachets in a machine, as we do in our company, or at the tea shop or hotel, they put them in their own kind of bags that you can fill, each one individually. But take a look at the freshness of the tea. Now, of course, with black tea, that's a lot harder to ascertain because black tea looks, you know, old and decrepit's not a nice term for it, but it doesn't look fresh. But if you're after green teas, it's very clear from sight and aroma and even kind of the feel of the leaves you'll learn after a while, even though they are all dry, who's fresher and who's more stale. Fresh is better for your body in terms of the polyphenols that you're gonna pull out of there. Fresh is always better. And then I would go with going back to what you like. So decide what is your style. Some people, and in my company, even it's so interesting. We people are all over the place with not everyone has the same favorite teas, not by a long shot. And tea is so much more diverse than, let's say, coffee. You might focus in on an Ethiopian or a Colombian, Costa Rican, but tea, my goodness, you know, you've got not only the six different tea types, but then within each tea type, you've got hundreds of different regions. The terroir is so important, and budget plays into it a lot. So frankly, you will find, and you can also tell by taste, and we can all tell by taste, you do not need to be a tea sommelier to be able to tell if a tea is fresh or stale. That is just like telling if a piece of bread is fresh or stale. We can all figure that out. So again, I would go with what you love if you're about the functional benefits, then yes, black tea is really good for keeping your breath fresh for that kind of bacterial kind of cleanup stuff, your digestion. Green tea is more about the immunity and the steady energy. But I would figure out what I love to drink the most. And even though we probably carry well over a hundred teas at my company now, I hesitate to say, I probably go back to about the same 12 teas, and two or three of those are herbals. So another big actually section in my new book is something that has become a lot more prevalent in cancer care in the last decade, and that is adaptogenic teas, which really kind of came into the limelight during COVID because people needed calm. And adaptogens, even though Camelliosinensis, green tea is an adaptogen, it's not a primary adaptogen. But primary adaptogens are all caffeine-free herbal, to the best of my knowledge. I'm stating that like it's, but they are all herbal. They are all non-tea, the primary adaptogens. And those are used more and more, and there's so many studies just in the last five years about adaptogens used as a complementary therapy as people are going through cancer care, because it is stressful. It is stressful both physically and mentally. And what adaptogens do is they can take a physical stressor. So these are herbs that were classified only in the mid-20th century by Soviet doctors when they were coming up with substances for combat pilots to be able to deal with stress. You know, you go up, you're flying at mock, whatever the heck, and you get shot at. That's stressful, right? So that's a moment of stress. But of course, that's not a chronic stress. That is a moment of stress, but they need to come right back to center in order to be able to pull their next maneuver or whatever. Adaptogens help us get back to center, whether the stress is something that spun you up or took you down. So if you got kind of a depressing piece of news or are in a physical slump energy-wise, an adaptogen can bring you back up to center. If you've gotten that, you know, that either shot at as a fighter pilot, or I guess the rest of us maybe pulled over by a cop for speeding, you've had that up in the air kind of stress, the adaptogen will bring you back to center. Similarly, black tea is really good at regulating cortisol levels. So after a stressful event, if you can have black tea rapidly, and if you think to the Harry Potter novels, when something stressful happens, they're like Hagrid will say, Come in, have a cup of tea. It's true, they did. Yes. It is so both adaptogens and black tea are actually really good at helping us regulate quickly back to that center.

SPEAKER_02 43:03

And do you have some favorite adaptogens?

SPEAKER_01 43:06

Just before we move on from that, do you have some favorite adaptogens? I do. So I love, and they're they're getting harder and harder to find. I love rhodiola, which we used to use in our adaptogenic chai. We've now changed it to be ashwagandha chai, and honestly, I don't know if it contains rhodiola any longer or not. I know one of the problems was getting that one. I do also love lion's mane mushroom. And I'm actually working on, I'm in the final throes of coming up with a matcha latte blend that has lion's mane mushroom in it. So these are all substances which during the pandemic I just started very intense research on, both in terms of how myself and my customers enjoyed them and in. Terms of what's in the literature. So Reishi and Chaga mushroom we also love very much. But Rhodiola Ashwaganda is the huge one. And that's what my customers, if I had to say, the crowd favorite Ashwaganda and Tulsi Holy Basil. And yeah, personally, I love rhodiola because it's it just it tastes great. A lot of adaptogens kind of taste like mushrooms and twigs and which they in large part.

How To Buy And Store Tea

SPEAKER_02 44:30

Thank you for that. Because I do think that is an important piece too, even just in our work with clients is coming up with ideas, different ideas to help the, you know, like the adaptogen pieces build resilience in the body too. So it's calming that stress response. I love the way you said coming back to center. I think that's a really good way to think about it, and also build resilience to future stressors, because obviously moving through a cancer journey is incredible. Like you're going to continually be bombarded with stress. So what are the things that are going to kind of help hold your resilience? And I love, you know, the all the ones that you suggested, I think are really great ideas for people to bring in. And the fact that, like you mentioned, the blend you're working on with the matcha and the lines made. Like you can, it also doesn't have to be just the one, right? You can combine these so that you're getting multiple benefits in the in your cup or two or three. Depending on how many you're drinking. Yeah. What okay? So when we purchase tea, because I was just thinking about this in relationship to, so you're mentioning like obviously it makes sense to me that fresh is better. It's going to be more potent. It's the same when we buy spices, cooking spices, herbs, same idea, right? Even the concept of grinding your own spices versus buying already powdered spice is going to help preserve the freshness. So I'm very familiar with that concept. And we also have sort of this timeline of thinking when you get when you buy spices, for example, ideally you don't buy them in necessarily huge quantities because you want to try to get through them within, like within a few months, maybe six months tops, because then it's like the benefits start to decrease. So I'm curious, is this a similar truth for tea? Or what would you recommend for that? It is.

SPEAKER_01 46:09

And one of the reasons I feel that my company has a very loyal customer following is because we are real sticklers about freshness. There's nothing in my warehouse that is older than the last season of tea. That was very awkwardly said, but essentially, you know, it's important when you're drinking a green tea. So at this time in 2026, you shouldn't drink anything that's older than a 2025. So the 2026 green teas have not yet been harvested. The very first Chinese harvests will happen, Qinming, so very early April, and then the Japanese ones, it all depends on the climate that year, a little bit thereafter, but probably closer to May, June. And then they'll be available to us in the summer. 2025 green teas are just now starting to taste a little meh to me because the new ones are just around the corner a few months away. Frankly, yeah. So since you can't get a brand new green tea right now, saying that one year on green teas and white teas should be your limit in practice, I feel that it's more like nine months. You kind of, and if you get a super high-end Japanese green tea in Japan, it will have an expiration date, a Best Buy date of six months on it, which is very, very OZ, as you would say in French. And I'm sorry, I don't have the American word, but yeah, so really gutsy. We have expiration dates of two years on our teas, but black teas, frankly, I've pulled black teas and who wear teas get better with age. I've pulled seven and eight-year-old black teas out of weird places that I didn't know they were stored, and they're just as good as they were on day one. So it depends on the tea.

SPEAKER_00 48:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:08

And those the leaves that look closer to a fresh tea leaf get stale faster. And the black really oxidized teas, no, they probably don't lose much with time. They probably fare quite well.

SPEAKER_02 48:22

Like a wine.

unknown 48:23

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 48:24

Totally. Okay. That makes sense. So the greens, the whites, maybe the herbals as well. You want to be more mindful about how old you are.

SPEAKER_01 48:31

Yeah, and there it depends on the herbal. You know, something like I don't know. It's hard for me to say. I love fruits, so not exactly herbal or leaf. For instance, there are blends that we add Valencia orange peel to. And oh my gosh, when that first comes in, oh it's just so delicious, so amazing. And so citrus peels, of course, you want them as fresh as humanly possible. Something like Valerian root, I don't know. That that poor sucker, he smells the same no matter how long he sticks around. And I don't know if it loses its potency in terms of helping induce, you know, sleep or not over time. I don't know as much about herbs as I do about tea. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 49:18

I know that's okay. I think we could probably extrapolate even just to like the culinary herbs and spices, because I would say like roots are going to last longer. So when you mentioned like valerian root, like it would make sense, or dandelion root, the root is not going to degrade as quick as a leaf or like a flavor. Right, like gin. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So you could even just maybe use that as a totally.

SPEAKER_01 49:43

Whereas peppermint, you know, exactly. It's a few years old, smells sad. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:49

Yeah, smells sad.

Where To Find Maria And Closing

SPEAKER_01 49:50

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_02 49:52

Oh my gosh, this has been this is so great. So I want obviously, I want our listeners to be inspired to start drinking more tea, starting with whatever you enjoy, but taking into some of hopefully some of the recommendations that Maria shared with us today. And I would love for people to also be able to connect with you because the tea spot, I know it is a local, it's a place, but you do sell teas online too, correct?

SPEAKER_01 50:19

We are a warehouse with no entry. Okay, so you're not people aren't coming in and drinking a cup of tea. No. Yeah, no, we definitely we set up tours for groups who want to come. And if anyone is ever in Colorado in the front range and wants to come, please reach out. I would happily host you there. I am readily available on Instagram. I need to work harder on that, but I am M. Uspensky on Instagram and easy to find. And the Tea Spot is easy to find on Instagram and social media. And our email is info at the tea spot.com. You can always reach out and say, hey, want to speak with Maria about this, and I will hear about it shortly.

SPEAKER_02 51:08

Great. Okay, so then it is your business is actually set up to ship tea to people.

SPEAKER_01 51:13

Like we so we can always online is our retail portal. We used to have people come and show up before COVID and pick up their orders, but no longer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:24

Okay. Okay. This is actually great for our listeners because now that's much easier. And we'll make sure in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 51:34

Live people available to you during our business hours, always, but certainly overnight on email. And we love engaging with customers. We go over our customer reels, both positive reviews and if anything didn't work out for them, every week we go over every customer interaction because it's very important for our company and how we move forward. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:00

Okay. This is great. Can I have it shipped to France too? Is that possible? Absolutely. Yes, I was going to ask you for I don't think you can order and have it shipped to France. I don't know, but I do want your address, Dion. And okay. There will be tea shipped to France.

SPEAKER_02 52:13

Let's just say. Worst case scenario. I maybe when you come to Paris, I can visit you in person at some point, or when I come to the States, I can also order some tea while I'm there. Thank you so much for joining us. This was such a delightful conversation. Before we wrap up, I just I always like to ask because maybe I didn't ask something that's like top of mind for you, but is there anything else you would like to add or share before we think about it?

SPEAKER_01 52:39

The only thing that I would emphasize is that I hope that we I didn't in any way discourage people who love herbal teas from their herbal teas, because the history of herbs, non-tea herbs used in medicine is even older than the history of tea. So there are even more herbs than there are different kinds of teas in the world with many very valid benefits, even though my specialty is in chamellia sinensis and tea. Strictly speaking, I embrace herbs wholly. And I mean, at our company, we certainly do herbs a big honor as well. And herbs are very important to us and our customers, and certainly to people's health. But we would be here for another 10 hours if we help into all of the health benefits that we Yeah, that's for another show. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:34

Thank you for saying that though, because there are there's obviously a lot of benefits from herbal tea too. Maria, thank you again so much. I will make sure we'll link to all of the resources in our show notes. So if you guys want to connect with Maria, you'll have all the ways that you can do that. And thank you as always so much for listening. Please help spread the word so we can get this information into as many ears as possible. That's how we do this, how we get this information out there. And I look forward to meeting up with you all again soon in a coming episode. Bye, everyone.