Green Tea Health Benefits

Tea is the most popular drink on Earth next to water. In around 80% of the world, most people prefer to drink black tea rather than green tea. This makes comparative studies fairly simple to conduct on a rudimentary level.

In Japan, green tea is very popular. It's part of the culture there. The World Health Organisation has reported that Americans are three times more likely to get breast cancer than people in Japan. It is also consumed in China and other Asian countries who also have much lower rates of breast and prostate cancer.

Japan has an overall low rate of cancer, even though smoking is very popular and has traditionally been linked to lung cancer. These findings suggest that green tea seems to have benefited the health of entire countries. And yes, even those high in pollution and smoking! The fact that most people in Japan and China are thin proposes that the fat burning agents in green tea are potent.

There are chemicals in Japanese green tea known as polyphenols. There is evidence to suggest that these agents block certain proteins that help cancer spread and grow. The two proteins most affected are the vascular endothelial and the hepatocyte growth factors. Interestingly, both of these are main factors in cancer promotion.

There is also evidence that specific green tea polyphenols like EGCG  fight enzymes that are necessary for cancer to grow. Even better, they also seem to kill other cancer cells without harming the rest of the body and interior organs.

EGCG is one of the antioxidants that are similar to Vitamin E and Vitamin C, except that it's much more powerful.  EGCG works in concert with an amino acid called L-Theanine. L-Theanine is the agent in green tea that makes you feel relaxed and can put you in an alert, calm state. It's also known to enhance concentration while reducing feelings of stress. Thus, it's very popular among students, lawyers, and people who work in high-stress environments. But L-Theanine is not commonly found in most foods or drinks. It can only be obtained through black and green tea.

Physicians agree that adults can consume up to 400 mg of green tea per day. That's the equivalent of eight cups of green tea, and that's a conservative estimate. The true number could be as high as 16 cups per day. In most cases, the increase in caffeine intake does not lead to any substantial issues partly because green tea is much lower in caffeine than black tea and other types of drinks.

Japanese green tea is also a good choice because it's lower in fluoride than other types of tea. In Japan, there is less fluoride in the soil than in other places, such as China. The medical community has found in recent years that fluoride is unhealthy when consumed in large doses and intake needs to be monitored carefully. Many people have it in their drinking water, meaning that tea drinkers are getting a double dose.

To get the maximum green tea health benefits, you should know that the form it comes in is important. Many believe that loose-leaf tea is the most beneficial form of green tea. To make it, you can put tea leaves in a teapot and add boiling water. Let it steep for a minute or two. And then strain out the leaves while you pour it into the cup.