New research raises the power of green tea in disease prevention. Folks who drink more than six cups of green tea daily can lower their risk of heart disease by a large 75%. The research was done at the Okayama University in Japan. The research team was led by Etsuji Suzuki. The research was published in “Annals of Epidemiology”.
The university team used 14,000 senior Japanese, of which 12,250 subjects were analyzed to estimate the various associations between green tea consumption and all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
The study suggests that seven cups of green tea a day over a long period of time may massively reduce the risk of death from heart disease and colorectal cancer, compared to people who drank only one cup a day. Reducing anything by 75% is statistically massive but reducing the number one killer by this much can change the face of medicine.
The study also showed a risk reduction in colorectal cancer of thirty one percent for those drinking seven cups a day compared to one cup a day. This too is big numbers. . Suzuki. stated “To our knowledge, this is the first cohort study that shows the inverse association between green tea and colorectal cancer mortality,”
The benefits of green tea, observed in the study, were in people between the ages of 65 and 84. These results said the researchers may be due to long term high consumption (seven cups a day) of green tea. Green tea is a known cancer diet staple .
Further the university group said, “Assuming that green tea consumption at the time of assessment is sufficiently representative of long-term, previous exposure to make a plausible link with the risk of mortality, the longer cumulative exposure to green tea may be responsible for the stronger effects of the present study,compared to past studies.”
The super antioxidant green tea is said to be effective because of the polyphenols. Polyphenols have been proven to prevent disease Green tea provides between 30% and 40% of water-extractable polyphenols, while black tea only contains between 3% and 10%. The four main polyphenols found in fresh tea leaves are epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), epigallocatechin (EGC) epicatechin gallate (ECG) and epicatechin (EC).
This study was followed up for a five year period. . During this five year follow up an anti aging discovery was made. Drinking seven cups of tea a day reduced death from all causes by 55%. You don’t suppose this is why the longevity in Japan is over 80 for men and 85 years for females. Another fact China’s Macau region a very high tea drinking and producing area has a life expediency of 81 for males and 87 for females. Also it is true that these populations on average are much healthier during their whole life span, which gives a lot of creditability to the theory that people who eat and drink a plant based diet live longer and healthier lives.
Annals of Epidemiology 19(10):732-739, 2009