Tea, Health Benefits

 

Tea contains a number antioxidant chemicals that prevent cell damage caused highly reactive molecules called free radicals that are often associated with cancer and to a lesser extent heart disease. Polyphenols are a kind of antioxidant found in tea that have been shown to deactivate substances that help cancer grow and block the action of enzymes that cancers need for growth. Polyphenols are also found in red wine. Polyphenols in tea, particularly green tea, are more potent than polyphenols from other sources such as Vitamins C and E.

 

Black tea has more complex antioxidants than green tea, and these appears to benefit the heart.

 

Tea contains large amounts of catechins - a type of tannin - with antioxidant qualities linked with longevity, reducing blood pressure, and preventing cancer, heart and liver diseases. Tannins are organic substance found in tea and wood. Taken in large amounts tannins tannin can be toxic but their negative affects in the human body can be reduced if consumed with milk.

 

A study by scientists at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston found that the immune system of people who drank five to six cups of Lipton tea every day for two to four weeks produced five times more infection-fighting interferon cells than people who drank a similar amount of coffee.  The interferon cells were produced by gamma delta T cells in the immune system triggered by amino acids called L-theanine found in large quantities in tea.

 

Green tea more vitamins, particularly B1 B2 and C, than other teas because it is not processed.

 

Among the cancer-fighting polyphenols found in green tea is EGCG. Strongly associated with cancer fighting, it has 30 times more radical-fighting effect that vitamin E and 500 times more than vitamin C. EGCG can prevent the growth of blood vessels, which supply nutrients to cancerous tumors that they need to grow. It was once thought that green tea contains significantly more polyphenols such as EGCG than other teas but the amounts are more or less the same.

 

There is evidence that green tea prevents second heart attacks among people who have already had one; reduces muscle degeneration; cuts the infecting-ability of viruses and bacteria; and offers bacteria to protection from prostrate, breast, stomach and colon cancer.