14 DAY TRIAL // Newcastle University investigators determined in a new scientific research that people who drink green tea regularly are in fact less prone to developing forms of dementia such as Alzheimer's.
In addition, it would appear that the active substance at work in this type of tea are also very effective at protecting the human body against developing cancer. Green tea is an ancient and famous Chinese remedy, in use in East Asia for thousands of years.
The research group published the details of its work in the latest issue of the esteemed academic journal Phytomedicine. Dr Ed Okello was the leader of the experts who conducted the investigation.
Green tea has been demonstrated to have protective properties in many previous studies, but those researches analyzed the brew in its undigested, fresh form. What the Newcastle team attempted to find out was whether the same effects hold true once the tea had been digested in the stomach.
Digestion is an essential process the human body conducts when it processes foods we ingest. It allows us to extract the necessary nutrients from the plants, meats, fruits and beverages we consume, and then assimilate them to produce energy.
But there is a difference between foods containing nutrients, and those nutrients actually getting absorbed during digestion, Science Blog reports.
“There are certain chemicals we know to be beneficial and we can identify foods which are rich in them but what happens during the digestion process is crucial to whether these foods are actually doing us any good,” the team leader says.
“What was really exciting about this study was that we found when green tea is digested by enzymes in the gut, the resulting chemicals are actually more effective against key triggers of Alzheimer’s development than the undigested form of the tea,” Dr Okello says.
“In addition to this, we also found the digested compounds had anti-cancer properties, significantly slowing down the growth of the tumor cells which we were using in our experiments,” the expert adds.
The active substances in green and black tea are polyphenols, which have been proven to protect the brain against compounds such as hydrogen peroxide and beta-amyloid (a protein). These two chemicals play a critical role in the development of Alzheimer's.
“The digested chemicals protected the cells, preventing the toxins from destroying the cells. We also saw them affecting the cancer cells, significantly slowing down their growth,” the expert concludes.