Green Tea Benefits

Green Tea Benefits

(Source: http://drinkinggreenteabenefits.com/)

Green tea is one of the types of drinks that provide us with a large set of health benefits. This tea has been known and used in China for thousands of years as a remedy to many ailments, and just recently it has been re-discovered by the Western World, leading to many scientific studies that confirm many of the green tea benefits.

An epidemiological study was conducted in 1994, and the results showed that drinking green tea reduced the risk of esophageal cancer in both men and women by 60%! Other studies show that green tea is very helpful to lower the overall cholesterol levels and balance in favor of good cholesterol.

The main green tea benefits include helping with cancer, infections, high cholesterols issues, impaired immune function, cardiovascular diseases and rheumatoid arthritis.

The components that make drinking green tea bring all these benefits are called catechin polyphenols, and inside this group there is one particular anti-oxidant that stands out among the rest: epigallocatechin gallate or EGCG.

As an antioxidant, EGCG inhibits the growth of cancer cells, and also kills these cells without making any damage to healthy tissue. As it has been said, it lowers cholesterols and aids in preventing heart attacks and strokes thanks that it prevents the formation of abnormal blood clots. This component also limit the negative effects of smoking and a diet with fat. As a matter of fact, it has been found out that heart disease is low in Japan despite that fact that 60% of Japanese people are smokers.

Relatively new studies have also shown that green the benefits may be more: in 199 the American Journal of Nutrition found evidence that drinking green tea could help in dieting by allowing you to burn more calories. Also it can prevent tooth decay thanks that it is an excellent agent to fight bacteria!

On the other hand, if we are going to talk about negative effects, we won’t find anything serious. Drinking green tea has been linked to insomnia because it contains caffeine. But the levels of caffeine in green tea are lower than the levels found on coffee, so this isn’t really a major problem.