On various occasions, people are always warned not to take medicine with tea, and it is best not to drink tea on the day of taking medicine. Because most people always think that tea is not good for medicine. There is a saying that tea can detoxify (according to the tradition of China, tea was discovered in this way), so it can also be an antidote ("three-point poison of medicine"), and once the medicine is solved, it will have no efficacy.

So, will drinking tea be the antidote? It should be said that many times, drinking tea is more or less an antidote. In this regard, experts have given some explanations.

One of the most common explanations is that tannic acid contained in tea can easily react with alkaloids in the stomach, forming insoluble precipitates, so that drugs cannot be absorbed by the human body /news 18/2 16 tea-related health links cannot play a medicinal role. The active components of many traditional Chinese medicines are alkaloids, such as ephedra containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, coptis chinensis and phellodendron chinensis containing berberine, and Stemona chinensis containing Stemona. Other active components such as corydalis yanhusuo, Cirsium japonicum, Cyathula cyathulae and Datura stramonium are mainly alkaloids. Therefore, drugs containing these ingredients will precipitate when taken with tea, which will affect the efficacy. In addition, tannic acid in tea has astringent effect, which will hinder the absorption of nutrients such as protein. Therefore, drinking tea, especially strong tea, will also reduce the efficacy when taking nourishing drugs such as Dangshen, Astragalus and Yam.

Some experts believe that the biological components of tea and medicine (especially Chinese herbal medicine) are many and complex, and the relationship between them is far from being fully understood. Therefore, whether there are negative effects or not, it is best not to drink tea when taking medicine.