Food & Ingredients

Can Drinking Tea Boost Your Immune System?

Can Drinking Tea Boost Your Immune System?
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Updated on February 12, 2025
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5 Types Of Tea That May Support Your Immune System

You are what you eat! Or drink? Tea's benefits extend far beyond a cozy night on the couch.
5 Types Of Tea That May Support Your Immune System

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Most of us have reached for a mug of hot tea in the hopes of easing a sore throat or staving off the common cold. The concept of tea as medicine is nothing new. “The Chinese have been using this method for centuries to reduce ailments and improve the immune system,” says Paulina Lee, RD, a Houston-based registered dietitian who uses Western medical practices and complementary and integrative therapies to help clients address the root causes of their health concerns.

Despite the widespread use of tea for immunity, there is little hard scientific evidence to prove that tea offers this type of perk. Read on to learn what we’ve discovered about how tea may — or may not — help keep your immune system on point.

How Tea May Support Your Immune System’s Health

The bulk of tea’s immunity-boosting and overall health benefits are tied to a group of antioxidants known as polyphenols. “A significant amount of epidemiological data has shown that a diet rich in polyphenols is protective against chronic health conditions such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes,” says Megan Meyer, PhD, the Durham, North Carolina–based senior director of science communications for the International Food Information Council. Her past research examined the effects of nutritional antioxidants on the immune system’s response to influenza.

One review study found that teas are especially rich in polyphenols known as flavonols. These plant chemicals have been shown to help lower blood pressure and cholesterol.

As far as your immune system is concerned, antioxidants (like the flavonols in tea) can help protect your body against free radicals generated by pollution, cigarette smoke, and ultraviolet rays.

 Free radicals can have harmful effects on the body, including contributing to a weakened immune system.

There are many tea varieties that may support your immune system’s health. Popular options like green, black, white, and oolong tea all come from the same evergreen plant, Camellia sinensis.

 “What makes them distinct is how they are prepared,” Dr. Meyer says. Differences in processing, geographical location, and plant varieties account for the unique flavors and nutritional compositions of tea, and those differences may mean that some teas offer more immunity benefits than others.

Herbal teas may also support your immune system’s health. “Most herbal teas are known to have health-supporting qualities,” Lee says.

Herbal teas are not made from the Camellia plant but instead from dried herbs, spices, roots, seeds, fruits, or leaves from other plants.

 Depending on the nutritional makeup of a given plant, some herbal teas may be better for your immune system’s health than others.

More Research on Tea and Immune System Health Is Needed

While the research on tea and immune system health sounds promising, the studies thus far either haven’t used humans or the population sizes involved were relatively small. Many studies also use tea in capsule or tablet forms, both of which usually pack a far greater dose of plant compounds than you’d find in a tea bag. Given these limitations, it’s tough to know whether a cup of tea will benefit a typical person’s immune system health. More large studies of humans using brewed tea are needed.

That said, health experts generally agree that brewed tea without a sweetener is a healthy beverage choice. “I personally believe that teas are a great way to add functional foods and herbs to your diet on a daily basis,” Lee says. So drink up! And if immune system health is your top concern, you might want to start with this list of the five top teas for a healthy immune system, in order of strongest evidence to weakest.

Green Tea

Mild, bittersweet green tea is a rich source of catechins. “Catechins are polyphenols that have an overall positive benefit to wellness and are notable antioxidants,” Lee says. Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) is one of the most abundant and best-known catechins in green tea. It also offers perks for your immune system.

For example, a past study found that treating mice with EGCG increased the number of regulatory T cells in their spleens and lymph nodes. Regulatory T cells modulate immune response, helping your system stay balanced and preventing it from attacking healthy cells.

Research suggests that EGCG may also affect immune function in humans. In a more recent study, researchers took T cells from 20 healthy adult males and treated them with EGCG they’d isolated from green tea dissolved in water. They discovered that the EGCG prevented the T cells from creating pro-inflammatory proteins known as cytokines, which suggests that the plant compounds in green tea may help regulate the immune system.

While these results offer clues about the link between green tea and immunity, more research in humans is needed, including studies involving people with weakened immune systems and studies involving larger population sizes overall.

Turmeric Tea

Turmeric is the vibrant yellow spice that gives curry its bold color, and it is also a popular type of herbal tea that may give your immune system a boost. “Research shows that turmeric can decrease inflammation and that it contains high levels of antioxidants, which both support overall immune function,” Lee says.

The primary active compound in turmeric is curcumin. According to research, curcumin effectively scavenges different types of free radicals, controls enzymes that neutralize free radicals, and helps prevent the creation of free radicals. Given the role that free radical damage can play in many diseases, the antioxidants in turmeric may make this spice a handy addition to your immunity-health diet.

Researchers have also found that curcumin may play an important role in the immune response. For example, a prior study using cultured spleen cells from mice revealed that curcumin could regulate T cells and B cells, two lymphocytes that recognize and respond to foreign substances inside your body. In the aforementioned study, curcumin helped regulate the immune response to prevent immune cells from attacking healthy tissues. Researchers concluded that curcumin may be a promising therapy for keeping the immune system in check.

All the same, research on turmeric tea using humans specifically is lacking, which means scientists don’t yet know whether you’ll see all those health benefits by sipping it in tea form. There are more recent studies that indicate turmeric may benefit the immune system in the fight against infection, but studies looking at tea specifically are still lacking.

Black Tea

This bold tea variety gets its dark color from a group of polyphenols known as theaflavins. “Research supports theaflavins’ antioxidant potential, even compared to ECGC,” Lee says.

The antioxidants in black tea may have unique effects on the immune system. For example, a past clinical trial found that healthy people (defined in this case as having no major illnesses and normal to mildly elevated systolic blood pressure) who drank three cups of black tea per day for six months showed increased immune activity.

Researchers looked at three markers that indicate that the immune system has kicked into gear: neopterin, kynurenine, and tryptophan. While black tea had no significant effect on neopterin or tryptophan levels, it did increase kynurenine, which suggests that the polyphenols in black tea help activate the immune response in healthy people.

The fact that this study involved human subjects drinking black tea is a plus, especially since these types of studies are very limited. But the sample size was small — 45 people drank the tea and 49 were in the control group. Overall, the clinical usefulness of the increased kynurenine in the group that drank the tea is not clear either. To better understand the effect of drinking black tea on specific health conditions and the immune system, more studies are needed that involve a variety of different patients and larger sample sizes. This would allow scientists to more effectively evaluate its different effects on specific symptoms and diseases.

White Tea

Thanks to its minimal processing, white tea is one of the lightest, most delicately flavored varieties on the market. Like its green cousin, white tea offers high levels of catechins.

 However, while white tea has antioxidant benefits similar to green tea, Lee notes that the antioxidant potential of green tea is still greater.
Robust human research on white tea and immunity is lacking, which is why this variety is lower on this list. But the minimal evidence we do have so far suggests that it may be worth a closer look in future literature. For example, an older test-tube study found that white tea extract helped tame inflammation caused by free radicals in human skin cells.

As an added perk, white tea may offer antimicrobial benefits. For example, researchers tested the antimicrobial effects of white tea leaf by pitting it against oral Streptococcus mutans and Streptococcus sobrinus bacteria. These are two microorganisms that contribute to tooth decay. After a 72-hour incubation period, researchers found that the white tea extracts showed significant antibacterial effects against Streptococcus mutans, which suggests that white tea extract may help protect against tooth decay.

While test-tube studies like these can produce interesting results, they don’t offer the whole picture. More studies involving humans drinking brewed tea are needed to understand how white tea affects the immune system. “An herb or supplement going through our digestive systems must be absorbed into the bloodstream, go through processing in the liver, and still be effective when diluted in the body,” Lee explains. So, take test-tube studies with a proverbial grain of salt.

Ginger Tea

As a close relative of turmeric, ginger may also offer immunity-health benefits when sipped in a cup of tea.

Gingerol is the main active compound that’s responsible for ginger’s spicy, peppery flavor and medicinal properties. According to a prior review study, gingerol not only offers antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects but may also help treat infections.

Few studies have looked at ginger’s effects on the immune system or the effects of ginger tea in particular. More research is needed to conclude whether ginger tea can play a role in immune system health.

The Takeaway

  • Tea has been used for centuries to improve immunity, thanks to several antioxidants that may help protect against chronic diseases and free radical damage.
  • Various types of tea, such as green, black, white, and oolong, may offer immune system benefits due to their antioxidant content, but more research is needed, especially human trials involving brewed tea.
  • Herbal teas like turmeric, ginger, and others may support immune function, with compounds like curcumin and gingerol showing promise in reducing inflammation and fighting infections, but further human studies are needed to confirm these effects.
EDITORIAL SOURCES
Everyday Health follows strict sourcing guidelines to ensure the accuracy of its content, outlined in our editorial policy. We use only trustworthy sources, including peer-reviewed studies, board-certified medical experts, patients with lived experience, and information from top institutions.
Resources
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  12. Thring TS et al. Antioxidant and Potential Anti-Inflammatory Activity of Extracts and Formulations of White Tea, Rose, and Witch Hazel on Primary Human Dermal Fibroblast Cells. Journal of Inflammation (London, England). October 13, 2011.
  13. Kusumawardani A et al. Comparative Study of Antimicrobial Potential of White Tea and Black Tea Leaf Extracts From East Java-Indonesia on Two Species of Oral Streptococci. Materials Today: Proceedings. 2019.
  14. Mashhadi NS et al. Anti-Oxidative and Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Ginger in Health and Physical Activity: Review of Current Evidence. International Journal of Preventive Medicine. April 2013.
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