Herbal Green Tea Antioxidant Benefits

Green tea has magical herbal powers that will enhance your life, restore your vitality and quite possibly may save your life. Green tea has been utilized as a wonder herb for thousands of years. Chinese and Indian people have been drinking green tea and reaping its natural benefits for about 5,000 years now. In the Western world we have only begun discovering green tea's natural health benefits.

What Are Antioxidants?

• Green tea has been discovered to contain very powerful antioxidants called polyphenols. These polyphenols are stronger in concentration in green tea than in vitamin C and E. In various studies done on animals and humans, scientists are discovering that green tea antioxidants are so powerful that they can help a person ward off certain cancers, such as bladder and throat cancer, and quite possibly breast cancer in women, according to a study at Aichi Cancer Center in Japan. The antioxidants are also thought to help a person's skin remain vital and young looking by fighting off free radicals in the atmosphere.

Ancient Tea

• Derived from the Camellia Sinensis plant, green tea was originally cultivated in East Asia thousands of years ago. Camellia plants can grow as large as a bush or a tree. It is the unfermented leaves of the plants that are harvested and eventually ground up into tea that is steeped and placed into our tea cups for several minutes to make the tea stronger. Three to five minutes of placing the teabag into your tea cup is all that is needed to reap the natural benefits green tea holds.

Catechins

• Green tea's polyphenols break down into catechins such as EGCG and epicatechin. Scientists are currently studying them, as reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2001, to see how these powerhouses benefit mankind. In a preliminary report from a one-year study from 2006, scientists found that green tea contains incredible forces of nature in small tea leaves that are purported to fight free radicals in a person's body. Scientists believe that the free radicals cause a person to age and that the free radicals can cause heart disease and cancer. Clinical studies as reported in the Annals of Epidemiol in 2000 indicate that green tea's antioxidant properties may help prevent atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease.

Breast Cancer Hope

• Breast cancer may have found its foe in green tea. Recent animal studies from the Aichi Cancer Center in Japan have shown that the antioxidant properties of green tea have fought off mild cases of breast cancer in animals. However, the studies produced on humans were proven to be inconclusive.

Catechins Fight Cancer

• There may be hope for cancer victims due to recent studies that found the antioxidants may selectively inhibit the growth of cancer. The National Cancer Institute says that in recent laboratory studies of lab animals from Japan in the Aichi Cancer Center, the catechins fought off the oxidants before they could damage the cells of the animals. They reduced the size of the existing tumors, thus inhibiting the growth of the cancer cells.

Using Green Tea

• An average cup of green tea contains 50 to 150 milligrams of polyphenols. Japanese scientists are recommending that people drink two to three cups of green tea a day to get the antioxidants. Drinking green tea is also believed to help people lose weight due to the mixture of caffeine, the antioxidants and other healthy, fat-fighting properties found in green tea.