It has been scientifically proven that green tea provides us with numerous health benefits. Just recently it has been claimed that green tea helps to fight and prevent breast cancer and this is being researched at the present time. What is most interesting is that the Chinese have been using green tea as a medicinal treatment for diseases for over 4000 years. Contained within Green Tea is an antioxidant called polyphenol EGCG which inhibits cancer cells from reproducing. It is also known that Polyphenol can kill harmful cancer cells whilst leaving the healthy ones alone. But it is not only the polyphenol contained within green tea that is helpful to us but it also rich in minerals such as aluminum, fluoride, flavonoids, alkaloids, tannins and other polyphenols and because of these it is known to be effective in lower cholesterol levels and preventing blood clots forming. It has been proven that green tea acts in helping to effectively strengthen our immune systems as well as being effective in helping to treat rheumatoid arthritis, heart diseases and infections. In studies it has been shown that green tea helps in preventing prostate cancer and reducing the risk of esophageal cancer in chronic smokers. It is also commonly believed that green tea is able to help prevent tooth decay as well as aiding people with weight loss. Although green tea and black tea come from the same plant there are in fact completely different. Green tea, which is now becoming more popular across the globe is not fermented where as black tea is. There have been a number of experiments carried out on rats with green tea and studies have indicated that those rats drinking green tea were found to have their tumors reduce in size and in others the development slowed. Yet in rats who drank just water there was no slowing or reduction in the growth of their tumors of any kind. The type of results being produced by these studies is certainly providing us with hope that green tea could be used to fight cancer, however there have been no conclusive results provided on humans as yet and many more years of study are required before a determination can be made of green teas effectiveness against cancer. It is thought that drinking three to four cups of green tea daily are considered to be effective as helping to prevent cancer in us, but the green tea which comes in capsule form is not seen as being as effective. Green tea should be drunk at all times without milk or sugar, and although three to four cups of green tea seems a lot to drink, it isnt really when usually people will drink much more coffee or fizzy drinks in a day. Although green tea does contain caffeine (which is a problem for some people) it contains less that the same would be found in a cup of coffee, but by drinking large quantities of green tea you may find you develop insomnia or sleep patterns become disrupted. A large amount of supermarkets and grocery stores stock both caffeinated and decaffeinated green tea products in various flavours and certainly women who have breast cancer may want to consider drinking green in their fight against the disease. |
