The health benefits of tea
have been receiving attention in the media. Tea's ability to
promote good health has long been promoted and believed in
China. Recent research has been able to identify the
components in tea that appear to be directly related to tea's
health promoting benefits.
Several substances, classified as antioxidants (also referred
to as polyphenols), are found in tea and these are the
components that are able to combine with unstable positively
charged oxygen molecules, otherwise known as 'free radicals'.
The 'free radicals' have been shown to cause not only cellular
damage but also can damage DNA. As a consequence to the
damage, various health problems develop.
Tea's active ingredients are caffeine in combination with the
tannin that gives it its pungency and much of its aroma and
flavor (which essential oils also enhance). The New York
Academy of Medicine held a symposium on "Pharmacological and
Physiological Effects of Tea" in 1955 and found that, for
reasons they could not explain, tea, unlike coffee, does not
cause nervousness, insomnia, or stomach irritation when drunk
in quantity. The scientists' tests showed a cup of tea gives
both an immediate and a delayed lift without secondary
depressing effects later on. They agreed tea is a good agent
for relieving fatigue and aids clearness of thought and
digestion alike.
For years, studies in China and Japan have shown that the
folklore about tea does contain some truth -- it does promote
longer life. Japanese smokers have only half the lung cancer
rate as American smokers. In areas of Japan where the most tea
is drunk, the rate of stomach cancer is the lowest. In a study
of 6,000 Japanese women, those who drank 5 cups or more of
green tea per day cut their risk of strokes by 50 percent.
"Drinking tea with meals in Japan and China," says a cancer
researcher at the University of British Columbia, "is thought
to be a major reason for low cancer rates in these countries."
