Know some facts about Tea especially, Green Tea

Green Tea has all properties to fight even the cancer. It is a powerful antioxidant too. Sip it regularly without sugar and milk for your own good health.

For about 4000 years the Chinese have been using green tea without sugar and milk as a medicine. When tea first arrived in Britain it was not advertised as a beverage, but as a medicine with all sorts of claims being made for it. In 1657 tea was considered an effective treatment for gout, and in 1659 the first advertisement for tea, printed by Thomas Garraway claimed tea not only “. . . makes the body active and lusty” but also “. . . removes the obstructions of the spleen . . .”

Sweetened tea was drunk heavily by the working classes. The caffeine in tea made it possible to work long hours and the sugar provided a short term boost of energy and empty calories that, although not as beneficial as meal, ensured the worker would get through the day.

Since tea is the second most-drunk beverage in the world, after water, its health implications have been under study for decades by scientists. This is what the scientists agree on in thousands of studies: Tea has no calories, no fat and no salt. Free radicals are invading cells that cause genes to become cancerous and cholesterol to rise so that it clogs the arteries causing heart disease.

Antioxidants help protect our body from free radical damage by destroying free radicals. Whether it is black, green or red (oolong), tea contains flavinoids called polyphenols or catechins which give tea its antioxidant properties. In fact, tea ranks as high as fruits and vegetables in antioxidants.

Tea lowers risks of heart disease and stroke. A study from Harvard Medical School shows that tea drinkers among heart attack patients might survive longer than those who drink something else. Those who drank at least 14 cups of tea per week were 44% less likely to die than those who don’t drink tea. Researchers at Boston University recently found that black tea appears to repair blood-vessel damage in people who have coronary-artery disease. And at the USDA, a just completed study found that consistent tea-drinking significantly lowered LDL cholesterol (the bad kind) without decreasing helpful HDL cholesterol. Tea improves blood flow and the ability of the arteries to relax and keep blood pressure healthy. It also inhibits the abnormal formation of blood clots which is leading cause of heart attacks and stroke.   

Other studies report increased Bone-density measurements among tea-drinkers possibly due to the fluoride in tea, coupled with catechins. The results of a Chinese study published in the May 2002 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that people who are long-time tea-drinkers seem to have an advantage in terms of bone mineral density over those who don’t habitually drink tea. In 1994 the Journal of the National Cancer Institute published a study indicating that drinking green tea reduced the risk of esophageal cancer in the Chinese by nearly 60%. University of Purdue researchers recently concluded that a compound in green tea inhibits the growth of cancer cells.

green tea: beneficially healthy

For years, researchers were puzzled by the fact that, despite consuming a diet rich in fat, the French have a lower incidence of heart disease than the Americans. The answer was found to lie in red wine, which contains resveratrol, a polyphenol that limits the negative effects of smoking and a fatty diet. In a 1997 study, researchers from the University of Kansas determined that EGCG is twice as powerful as resveratrol. according to Hirofumi Tachibana’s team at Kyushu University in Japan, research showed that growth of human lung cancer cells that have a cell receptor called 67 LR is slowed significantly after drinking just two or three cups of green tea, which contains EGCG.

Green, oolong, and black teas all come from the leaves of the camellia sinensis plant. What sets green tea apart is the way it is processed. Green tea leaves are steamed, and the EGCG compound remains intact. Black and oolong tea leaves are made from fermented leaves, which results in EGCG being converted into theaflavin which is not nearly as effective in preventing and fighting various diseases.

If we talk about the process of making green tea then automatically a question arises whether adding milk or sugar to it has any implications. Sugar does nothing for the body except add calories. But what impact does milk have? Research published in the European Heart Journal and the New Scientist in January 2007 has found that the protective effect that tea has on the cardiovascular system is totally wiped out by adding milk. A German study done at the Charite Hospital at the University of Berlin compared the effects on arteries of drinking black tea with skimmed milk or plain hot water. It found that caseins - proteins in milk - blocked that powerful effect of catechins - the flavonoid sin tea - that helped to protect the arteries and kept cardiovascular disease at bay.