Immunity and tea: How tea supports your immune system
During cold and flu season, your immune system is your body’s defense to help prevent from catching illness. Keeping your immune system strong and healthy is important to maintaining the ability to fight off any sickness you may catch.
The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Nutrition Source (1) identifies two different kinds of immunity, innate and adaptive.
Innate immunity is the protective barrier such as skin and mucus, that defends from pathogens entering our body. Adaptive immunity is a system regulated by cells and organs that learn to recognize a pathogen. This recognition allows your immune system to more efficiently destroy a pathogen if it enters your body again.
Both types of immunity are important.
There is a variety of factors that may cause our immune system to defend our body. There’s also a number of factors that cause the immune system to become weaker over time, because of this it is important to maintain a healthy immune system.
How to support your immune system
Supporting your immune system is very important to helping it do its job effectively. The Harvard Nutrition Source (1) provides various ways you can do this.
- Eating a balanced diet
- Take a multivitamin
- Don’t smoke
- Exercise regularly
- Drink alcohol in moderation
- Maintain a good sleep schedule
- Wash hands often
Among these things, some people try to maintain not just a balanced diet but an immune system boosting one.
Immune boosting diet
As mentioned by the Harvard Nutrition Source (1), the most important thing is maintaining a balanced diet. Though there are studies that say certain kinds of food can help boost immune function and that “making sure you eat a diet rich in immune-boosting foods is the simplest method to stay healthy and fit,” (2).
The same study lists foods investigated for their immune boosting properties. This includes citrus fruits due to their vitamin C content, almonds due to their vitamin E and C, ginger due to its anti-inflammatory properties, turmeric due to its anti-inflammatory properties and green and black tea due to its antioxidant and amino acid content. This list contains plant-based foods, there are also animals sourced foods such as eggs and milk that may have positive effects on immunity.
Immunity Tea
There is no one specific immunity tea, black and green tea have been studied for their potential immune system benefits (2).
In green tea the antioxidant epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) and the amino acid L-theanine are the compounds that researchers have evaluated for their potential health benefits, some of those benefits fall outside of immune function.
In a recent article, Fraser Tea explored how exactly L-theanine content in green tea has potential to benefit focus and concentration. In another article, Fraser Tea also explored how organic tea can be good for gut health, something EGCG plays a larger role in.
Due to some tea blends have ingredients other than tea, they may include more ingredients listed as immunity boosting. For example, Fraser Tea’s Turmeric Ginger tea contains green tea as well as ginger and turmeric. Though the exact scientific effects of this specific tea have not been studied, it does contain many ingredients that have been studied in relation to immune function (2).
Please note: Before starting any change to your diet and routine, you should always discuss this with your primary care physician first and make sure that it does not interfere with any health conditions or your current medications.
Disclaimer: This website is not intended for the purpose of medical advice. All information, content, and material of this website is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis, and/or medical treatment of a qualified physician or healthcare provider.
Sources
- “Nutrition and Immunity • the Nutrition Source.” The Nutrition Source - Harvard Chan School, 17 Jan. 2025, nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/nutrition-and-immunity/. Accessed 07 Oct. 2026.
- Singh DN, Bohra JS, Dubey TP, Shivahre PR, Singh RK, Singh T, Jaiswal DK. Common foods for boosting human immunity: A review. Food Sci Nutr. 2023 Aug 18;11(11):6761-6774. doi: 10.1002/fsn3.3628. PMID: 37970422; PMCID: PMC10630845.