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The Health Benefits of Green Tea

7th July, 2010 - Posted by health news - No Comments

The health benefits of green tea have been known for centuries. The tea has important medicinal effects that can be traced back to a group of naturally occurring chemicals known as polyphenols. The most important of these is EGCG. Several studies have shown that this compound may be responsible for the reduction cardiovascular disease that has been reported in populations where consumption of the tea is high. Yale university has evaluated over 100 studies involving green tea and thinks that it may be responsible for decreased risk of cardiovascular disease in eastern cultures where up to 1.2 litres of the tea may be consumed per day.

Green tea is currently being evaluated in several trials worldwide. Some of the possible health benefits of Green tea includes.

Cancer Prevention

Animal studies have shown that rats who are fed Green tea are 50% less likely to develop cancer of the colon.

Cardiovascular Disease

Green tea consumption is associated with reduced risk of death from all cardiovascular causes

Dementia

Consumption of Green tea has been associated with decreased risk of dementia.

Cholesterol

Green tea reduces oxidation of LDL cholesterol (the bad type of cholesterol) and hence may contribute to reduced plaque formation in blood vessels.

Autoimmune Disease

Green tea may reduce the severity of arthritis. The antioxidant effect of green tea is thought to be responsible for this effect.

Prevention of Infection

Prevents HIV from binding to T cells as a natural fusion inhibitor.

Preventing Kidney Stones

Green tea has been shown in laboratory evaluation to decrease the formation of kidney stones.

Green Tea And Kidney Disease

Green tea has been found to have benefits in the prevention of kidney disease.

The health benefits of green tea are numerous and are likely to be durable to investigation. Yet are we likely to derive the benefits by simply drinking a cup of green tea per day?. The answer to that question is unknown, we do know that it takes at least 5 cups of tea per day to obtain the benefit of esophageal cancer prevention. Dose seems to be very important to green tea as well as method of preparation of the tea.