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health benefits of green tea

How Green Tea Helps Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease

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Matcha Tea

Matcha Green Tea

In addition to being a “crazy tea chick” and food blogger, I also write for several other websites I have covering subjects that I’m passionate about. These passions range from cats to Kentucky, from dream analysis to the Golden Age of Hollywood, and from self help to mental fitness. For each subject I “cover,” needless to say, I do a great deal of research and fact-finding.

While working on an article about Foods that Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease, two of my world collided when I read that green tea is actually wonderful for brain health.

Rates of dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease (Alzheimer’s is actually a form of dementia) are, tragically, on the rise. Millions of Americans (about 1 in 8 seniors) suffer from Alzheimer’s and it’s the sixth leading cause of death in the United States.

Until a cure for Alzheimer’s is discovered (and let’s all pray that this will happen in our lifetime), experts have given us many steps we can take to ward off (or at least delay) the chance of developing the disease.  One of the easiest ways we can put the odds in our favor is to eat the foods that have been proven to benefit our brains (see Brain Food).

An easy way to remember which foods are healthy for your brain is to simply ask yourself which foods are healthy for your heart. The same types of food can be found on both lists.

Green tea is a perfect example. We know it’s healthy for our bodies, but now research shows that it’s also great for our brains. Researchers from the University of Michigan have found that an element in green tea helps stop plaque growth in the brain that’s connected to Alzheimer’s disease.

Whether you drink your green tea iced or hot, know that each cup is great for you – body, mind, and soul.


Lower Your Cholesterol, Naturally, with Green Tea

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Inspiring Green Tea
Everyday Health recently published a great slideshow showing ways to Lower Your Cholesterol in Five Minutes or Less. Click the link to see all the potentially life-saving tips.

One of these tips was of great interest to those of us who love tea.

From Everyday Health:

Research reviewing 20 studies, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, found that sipping green tea reduces LDL by an average of 5.30 mg/dL, though the amount of green tea sipped varied widely from one study to the next. The secret ingredient in green tea to help lower your cholesterol? Antioxidants called catechins. One cup has between 50 and 100 mg of catechins. Get out your mug — across the studies, participants had between 3 and 10 cups a day.

You’ll definitely want to see the rest of the tips. Interestingly enough, there are many everyday things we can do that’ll help keep our cholesterol levels in a healthy range. Things that don’t involve medication… most of us are all for that! See Lower Your Cholesterol in Five Minutes or Less for more information.

Live Longer by Drinking Green Tea and Black Tea

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Live longer by drinking tea.

I do a great deal of reading about nutrition, heart health, mental health, and living longer (and better!).  While I do a great deal of research on these subjects for my self help blog and mental fitness blog, the main reason I do so much “healthy reading” is to keep my loved ones, and myself, as healthy as possible.

This morning, I read a great article on Prevention.com called “How Long Will I Live: Surprising Signs You’ll Live to Be 100?”  The gist of the article was for the reader to learn what things he/she was doing right and what things they might want to consider doing. If, that is, they want to live as long and as healthy as possible.

As I was reading along, I’d think things like, “Good, I do that…” or “Ooops, I’m dropping the ball there.”  When I came to the tip below, I thought, “I’m all over this one!”

Surprising Signs You’ll Live to be 100: You’re a Tea Lover

Both green and black teas contain a concentrated dose of catechins, substances that help blood vessels relax and protect your heart. In a study of more than 40,500 Japanese men and women, those who drank 5 or more cups of green tea every day had the lowest risk of dying from heart disease and stroke. Other studies involving black tea showed similar results.

You really need only 1 or 2 cups of tea daily to start doing your heart some good—just make sure it’s a fresh brew. Ready-to-drink teas (the kind you find in the supermarket beverage section) don’t offer the same health benefits. “Once water is added to tea leaves, their catechins degrade within a few days,” says Jeffrey Blumberg, PhD, a professor of nutrition science and policy at Tufts University. Also, some studies show that adding milk may eliminate tea’s protective effects on the cardiovascular system, so stick to just lemon or honey.

I’ve always loved tea and tend to drink, not only my own share, but a family of eight’s share as well.  I started drinking EVEN more tea when I reluctantly kicked my diet soft drink habit a short while back. Giving up drinks that were filled with things that were BAD for me and replacing them with drinks filled with things that were GREAT for me was one of the smartest things I ever did.

If you’re trying to give up soft drinks or diet soft drinks, stick with it.  It’s tough, I know that as well as anyone.  However, tea is a fantastic replacement. It’s delicious, healthy, refreshing, and has no downside.   I found that, for some reason, while trying to kick the soft drink habit, it helped if my black tea was extra strong. You may also find that adding lemon and/or honey will make it even more enjoyable as well.

Read the great article in its entirety: How Long Will I Live: Surprising Signs You’ll Live to Be 100

More Praise for the Health Benefits of Green Tea

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Kent & Sussex Summer Raspberry Green Tea

I subscribe to a couple (well… okay… more than a couple) of health-related newsletters. It’s as though highly regarded and well-known doctors come into my home and consult with me on a daily basis. Who wouldn’t want that? Free house calls!

One of my favorite newsletters is the Health Newsletter from Dr. Al Sears.  A recent newsletter was titled, “Why Most Japanese Never Wind Up in a Nursing Home.”

Because I read a great, great deal about health, tea, and green tea – I pretty much knew the reason before I even opened the newsletter.  Green tea… of course!

Here are excerpts from the newsletter:

No one wants to go to a nursing home. In fact, ending up in a nursing home is something most of us dread.

But in Japan – where people live longer than in just about any other part of the world – nursing homes are almost unheard of.

These are people living long, active lives. And they’re doing it from the comfort of their own homes.

I’m writing you today because I believe I’ve figured out how they do it…

When I was researching Japanese longevity, I looked at their overall lifestyles, their work lives, their exercise routines and what they were putting into their bodies.

There was one difference that really stood out… maybe the biggest I’ve discovered.

And it’s very simple.

The best part is you can start using it today to help you feel better and give you more energy.

It’s an antioxidant called epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG for short). The Japanese consume it almost every day, mostly in the form of green tea…..

 

In order to benefit from green tea, you need to “up the ante,” so to speak. One, two, or even three cups of green tea a day isn’t enough.  You need to drink at least 6 cups a day to achieve the benefits described above.  If, like me, you drink hot and iced green tea, it’s absolutely no problem.  I make a pot up first thing in the morning, drink iced green tea throughout the day, then make a pot up in the evening for hot green tea with honey.  Heaven.

On a somewhat related note, if you regularly get Green Tea Fraps at Starbucks, did you know that you can order them “Skinny?”  The best part is, they’re just as delicious… actually I like them even better because there’s a delicious matcha taste you don’t get in the “fatty” versions.

And now I’m craving one so badly I’m two minutes away from heading to Starbucks for a Skinny Green Tea Frap.  I love life.

Prevent Alzheimer’s and Age-Related Memory Loss by Drinking Tea

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Bella Luna Blue Tea from Adagio Teas

 

While doing research for my mental fitness blog, I read the outstanding book 100 Simple Things You Can Do to Prevent Alzheimer’s and Age-Related Memory Loss.  If you’re the least bit invested in the health of your brain, I strongly urge you to buy and read this great book.

As I read along the 100 things we can do to keep our brains healthy, I made mental notes of things I need to start doing, things I normally do, and things I’m ALL OVER.  A few things I”m ALL OVER are:

  • Eating plenty of fruits and vegetables
  • Walking each day
  • Drinking coffee
  • Drinking tea

Truth be told, with the amount of coffee and tea I drink, I did a little happy dance when I saw that each of these personal obsessions made the coveted list.  Since this is a tea blog, I’ll focus on the brain health benefits of tea.

Researchers at UCLA round that if you drink at least three cups of green or black tea a day, your likelihood of having a stroke drops by 21 percent.  If you double this (6 cups or more daily), your stroke probability falls 42 percent.   Who wouldn’t drink all the tea they possibly could with findings like these?!

But there’s more.

Evidence suggests that tea stalls the cognitive loss that precedes Alzheimer’s dementia and that the more tea you drink, the sharper your aging memory is.  As you probably already know, tea’s superpowers lie in the leaves.  Tea leaves are packed with compounds that penetrate the blood-brain barrier and block neuronal damage.

From 100 Simple Things You Can Do to Prevent Alzheimer’s and Age-Related Memory Loss: Lab rats raised on green tea, for example, have less damage in the hippocampus, or memory processing region of the brain, and consequently have vastly superior memories and learning abilities in old age.

One particularly powerful green tea antioxidant, EGCG, can block the toxicity of beta-amyloid, which kills brain cells, and remove, or “chelate,” destructive iron from the brain. In ground-breaking experiments, Israeli scientists found that EGCG can even revive sick and dying neurons thought lost to degenerative brain disease. Bringing back withered brain cells from the brink of death to robust life is a big-time help for anybody’s brain. – Page 256

The book also recommends readers either drink soft drinks and diet soft drinks once a month or not at all.  Basically, we have a choice:

  1. Drink soft drinks and diet soft drinks which not only give us ZERO nutritional value but put things into our bodies that experts say are harmful
  2. Drink tea instead of soft drinks and diet soft drinks and receive the health benefits to our bodies and minds.

The choice is as clear as filtered water, and now I’m going to celebrate tea’s goodness with a fresh pot of green tea.

The Health Benefits of Green Tea Simply Astound Me

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We’re all familiar with the health benefits of green tea. We spend a great deal of time on this tea blog praises the benefits of all teas, but green tea seems to pack an extra punch.

If you’re one of the many (make that MANY) people interested in watching their weight, or even in losing weight, green tea should become your new favorite drink. Here are a few obvious reasons:

  1. Green tea is calorie free.
  2. Drinking green tea keeps you from drinking calorie-laden or sodium-rich drinks.

I’ll be the first to confess, I struggled with soft drinks.  I was hooked on them throughout high school as well as into my twenties and beyond (we won’t go into how far beyond reaches, it’ll just give me a headache).   When I was somewhere in the early-thirties range, my metabolism turned on me. We’d always been very close friends, then all of a sudden, she became a raging lunatic. Despite my pleas, she tormented me with neglect. I realized that if she refused to be of any help, I’d have to start cutting back on calories.  I took a good look at the number of calories I consumed each day simply by drinking soft drinks.

Imagine my shock when I realized that I drank over 600 calories each day. One can of Dr. Pepper (my weapon of choice at the time) has 150 calories. I easily drank 4 cans a day.  If we were to be honest, it was probably more.

I switched to Diet Dr. Pepper and about 10 pounds came off almost immediately. How could it not, right?!  I didn’t realize, of course, that I was taking my sodium count to dangerous levels at the time.  I also failed to acknowledge that each can (or glass) did me absolutely no good whatsoever.  In fact, each one did harm.

I finally caught on to the insanity of drinking what is essentially poison and replaced my diet soft drinks with tea and another favorite, iced coffee.  It’s great to know that my drinks now do positive things for my body and mind.

Here’s a little trick for making green tea even healthier:  Add a little citrus.  Whether you add a lemon wedge, orange wedge, or splash of juice to your green tea – you’ll help your body benefit from the antioxidants.  Vitamin C actually helps your body to absorb more antioxidants from green tea.

Not only is green tea incredibly healthy for your body and mind, it can be a wonderful weight loss aid. For one thing, as we said, drinking green tea will keep you from drinking unhealthy, often calorie-rich drinks. Every wasted calorie saved is vital in weight loss and management.  Green tea has also been shown to help increase your metabolism and force it to become a friend instead of a foe.

Many people also say that green tea reduces their appetite.  I’ve read countless accounts of people drinking a cup of green tea about an hour before a meal in an effort to eat less.  I have to be honest though: Unless you are dangerously overweight, I personally wouldn’t go this route.  For one thing, we need to eat a well-rounded amount of food. We need the nutrients for optimum health.  Besides, if you don’t have a healthy, filling meal – you’ll just make up for it later by snacking and that’s almost always worse.

Ideally, we should all eat a healthy diet consumed mostly of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fish.  We should not ever waste any calories with our drink choices.  That’s just insane, if we think about it. If you aren’t already a huge fan of green tea (as well as other teas for that matter), make today the day you take the first step in a beautiful relationship.

Find the tea blend and the tea brand that you love best and vow to never leave its side.  Check out the tea aisle in your favorite store or never leave your house and Shop for tea on Amazon.

If you have to add a little flavoring to your tea, go with citrus or even a little honey. If you reach for white sugar, you’re pretty much defeating the purpose when it comes to counting calories.

If you have to add Stevia in order to make peace with green tea, do so.  It’s STILL healthier than soft drinks or diet soft drinks.  However, I think you may be surprised at how wonderful green tea is without any sweetening.

 

Green Tea Can Prevent, and May Even Help Cure, Cancer. It’s Cool Like That.

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Kent & Sussex Summer Raspberry Green Tea

I read a fascinating (make that FASCINATING) article earlier on Prevention.com. The article was about foods and drinks that not only prevent cancer, they have the nutrients, antioxidants, and compounds needed to even CURE cancer.

See why fascinating appears in all caps?

The article is the result of the phrase Physician, Heal Thyself  playing out.  The author, David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PhD was diagnosed with Brain cancer. He KNEW the power of different foods and drinks, so he began the fight of his life… at the table. He discovered a multitude of cancer-fighting foods that allowed him to live longer than anyone would have ever thought possible. How much longer? Well, he wrote the article 16 years after his diagnosis. 16 years!

I hope you’ll click through to read the rest of the article (I’ll link to it at the bottom), but I wanted to share with you what he had to say about tea. I learned a few things about my good friend Green Tea, and I think you will as well.

This article, like so many others, is absolute proof of the soundness of replacing soft drinks and diet soft drinks with tea. Soft drinks won’t help you keep from getting cancer and they won’t do a thing for those who already have it. Tea, on the other hand, has superhero properties and would love nothing more than to save your life.

Here’s the excerpt concerning tea:

Green tea is rich in compounds called polyphenols, including catechins (and particularly EGCG), which reduce the growth of new blood vessels that feed tumors. It’s also a powerful antioxidant and detoxifier (activating enzymes in the liver that eliminate toxins from the body), and it encourages cancer cell death. In the laboratory, it has even been shown to increase the effect of radiation on cancer cells.

Japanese green tea (sencha, gyokuro, matcha, etc.) contains more EGCG than common varieties of Chinese green tea, making it the most potent source on the market; look in Asian groceries and tea shops. Black and oolong teas, commonly used to produce popular tea blends such as Earl Grey, are less effective because they’ve been fermented, which destroys a large proportion of their polyphenols. Decaffeinated green teas, which retain the polyphenols despite the process of decaffeination, are also an option if you’re sensitive to caffeine.

How to Drink It: Sip 2 to 3 cups a day within an hour of brewing. Green tea must be steeped for at least 5 to 8 minutes–ideally 10–to release its catechins, but it loses its beneficial polyphenols after an hour or two. – From Prevention’s Edible Healing: Food Cures for Cancer: A doctor with a malignant tumor sets out to find his cure. And comes back with dinner. By David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PhD.

Please read the entire article: Foods that Fight and Prevent Cancer. There are foods that actually cause cancer cells to commit suicide!

Carrington Tea’s Original Green Tea: I don’t like it. I LOVE it.

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Not-so-shocking statement of the day: I love green tea. I love all green tea (just please don’t overflavor it or ruin it with lots of lemon, ugh). This tea is a thing of beauty and I’ll pretty much drink any green tea you put in front of me. Here’s the kicker, though: I think I’ve found my favorite green tea bags yet: Carrington Tea’s Original Green Tea. I can’t describe how much I love this tea; I definitely just tore through a box in record time.

Seriously, it’s that good. The only complaint I really ever have about green tea is when it’s too strong or bitter (especially from places like Starbucks or Joe Muggs or wherever; it’s like sucking on actual leaf). This tea is strong but not at all bitter and has the most amazing taste. The company recommends brewing time at 3-5 minutes which was about right for me too. The only thing I’d change is the water temperature: they advise bringing water to a “rolling boil” and pouring over tea bags, but I could never bring myself to pour boiling water over green tea – it’s just not done in this apartment. They also suggest adding sugar or lime to taste if you’d like…but I forbid you from messing this tea up by adding ANYTHING else to it.

The box I bought came with 20 bags (and probably lasted me around 2 weeks) and was not at all expensive. I could go on and on about the natural goodness of the leaves or the abundance of antioxidants, but by now I’m pretty sure you get the point: Green tea. Is good. For you. Period.

In a shocking twist, green tea is still good for you.

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Kent & Sussex Summer Raspberry Green Tea

 

Reuters Health is reporting on a Chinese study conducted on the effects of green tea on cholesterol. Not surprisingly to us green tea groupies, the tea was found to lower LDL, or the “bad cholesterol” by almost 2%. Here’s the article from the Reuters website:

Drinking green tea seems to cut “bad” cholesterol, according to a fresh look at the medical evidence.

The finding may help explain why green tea has been linked to a lower risk of heart disease, the leading killer worldwide, Xin-Xin Zheng and colleagues from Peking Union Medical College in Beijing report.

Because few people in the U.S. drink green tea, encouraging Americans to down more of the brew could have significant health benefits, the researchers write in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Still, one U.S. expert cautioned the drink shouldn’t be used as medicine for high cholesterol, as the effect found in the Chinese study was small.

The new report pools the results of 14 previous trials. In each of those studies, researchers randomly divided participants into two groups: one that drank green tea or took an extract for periods ranging from three weeks to three months, and one that got an inactive preparation.

On average, those who got green tea ended up with total cholesterol levels that were 7.2 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) lower than in the comparison group. Their LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol dropped 2.2 mg/dL — a decrease of slightly less than two percent.

There was no difference in HDL, or “good,” cholesterol between the two groups.

The cholesterol-lowering effects of green tea may be due to chemicals known as catechins, which decrease the absorption of cholesterol in the gut, according to the researcher.

However, the cholesterol reduction with green tea is pretty small, cautioned Nathan Wong, who runs the heart disease prevention program at the University of California, Irvine.

He told Reuters Health the drink “should not be recommended in place of well-proven cholesterol-lowering medicines for people with high cholesterol.”

Some researchers have raised concerns over possible side effects from heavy consumption of green tea or green tea extracts. For instance, there have been a few dozen reports of liver damage, and green tea may also interact with certain medications to reduce their effectiveness.

Still, Wong said smaller doses of the brew “could be a useful component of a heart-healthy diet,” with benefits that may go beyond its effect on cholesterol.

SOURCE: bit.ly/kPFJLS; American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online June 29, 2011.

Green Tea Blesses Your Heart

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Hot Green Tea

Green Tea Lowers Your Risk of Heart Disease

In the latest issue of the European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation, researchers reported that people who drink green tea have better blood vessel function just 30 minutes later. Inside of an hour, your heart is already enjoying benefits!

For the study, researchers gave either green tea, hot water, or a beverage containing the same caffeine as green tea to a group of volunteers. The researchers measured the volunteer’s blood flow 30, 90, and 120 minutes after drinking their beverages.

After drinking green tea, the volunteers experienced significantly increased artery widening. The widening was evident after just 30 minutes. The other beverages (the caffeinated beverage and hot water did not produce any significant changes in the same individuals).

According to WebMD.com, it comes down to endothelial cells. Green tea improves the function of these cells. Mini Cardiovascular lesson: Unhealthy, uncooperative endothelial cells play a key role in the development of clogged arteries. Clogged arteries, of course, lead to every cardiovascular evil you can imagine.

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