Health Benefits Of Green Tea

Green Tea is different from other teas. It is the method in which green tea is processed that makes it so special. Green Tea has less caffeine, more antioxidants, more Catechins, and more health benefits than most other teas.

There are four main groups of tea; herb teas, Oolong teas, Black teas and Green teas.

Herb teas are blends of various selected herb plants and generally do not contain caffeine. The other three types of tea are all made from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant, and these are Black Tea, Green Tea and Oolong Tea.

Green Tea is the most commonly consumed tea in the Eastern countries while Black Tea is the one that is most often sipped in the U.S.A., England and Canada.

While Black Tea and Oolong Tea lose a lot of their antioxidants when they are processed, Green Tea is processed differently so it maintains its high composition of antioxidants. This gives green tea its wondrous nutritional value.

It is how Green Tea is processed that makes it so much more important for us to consume than other teas. Green Tea is processed to allow it to maintain the majority of it's antioxidants and it is this unique processing method that makes Green Tea special.

Green Tea Leaves are steamed, rather than fermented like other teas are, and this is what allows the Polyphenols within it to remain at very high levels. These polyphenols are super antioxidants. Green Teas contains up to five times more of them than Black Teas do.

It is this high antioxidant content within Green Tea that gives you a medicinal reason to drink this herbal miracle on a daily basis.

The antioxidants within green tea may have the ability to extend your life expectancy. An eleven year study conducted in Japan followed 40,530 adults who drank varying amounts of green tea. The study showed that those who consumed five or more cups of Green Tea daily had a significant increase in their life expectancy.

The study results showed that if you are a woman and you consume five or more cups of Green Tea per day then your risk of dying can decrease by an an amazing twenty-three percent. If you are a man than drinking five or more cups of green tea per day can reduce your chance of dying from any cause by twelve percent.

The study showed that men who drank five or more cups of green tea per day reduced their risk of dying from cardiovascular disease by a possible twenty-two percent. Women in the study group reduced their risk by thirty-one percent.

Catechins which are a powerful antioxidant that is found in green tea, and which reduce the number of free radicals within the body, are believe to be the reason. By reducing the number of free radicals roaming within your body, the antioxidants in Green Tea effectively reduce your risk of developing heart disease.

One of the most powerful antioxidants within Green Tea, Epigallocatechin-3-gallate actually prevents damage of heart muscle cells from inflammation. Catechins also thin the blood to prevent unusual blood clotting from occurring.

Green Tea - 10-80 Chocolate - 46-61 Beans - 35-55 Black Tea - 6-50 Strawberries - 2-50 Red Raspberries - 2-48 Apples - 10-43 Red Wine - 8-30
Apricot - 10-25 Cherries - 5-22 Grapes - 3-17.5 Peaches - 5-14

Drinking just a few cups of Green Tea throughout your day can help prevent heart disease and other age related illnesses from occurring. Knowing this, don't you think that maybe you should consider putting the kettle on to heat a little more often?

If you are a man drinking five or more cups of Green Tea per day can possibly reduce your risk of dying from a stroke by an amazing forty-two percent. If you are a woman drinking this same amount then you can possibly reduce your odds of dying of a stroke by up to sixty-two percent. The reason? Green tea dilutes the blood and prevents unusual clot formation. The antioxidants within it also promote heart health.

It is believed that Green tea is also an aide in preventing cancers from forming. Epigallocatechin-3-gallate fights cancer. It is a powerful antioxidant that is believed to have properties that enable it to actually seek out and destroy cancer cells. It also helps prevent the formation of new cancer cells so it can slow the course of this devastating illness.

It has been proven that Green Tea is beneficial in the fight against prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, lung cancer, bladder cancer and tumors within the brain.

Green Tea is loaded with polyphenols which are powerful antioxidants. They combine with the free radicals within the body to make them stable, and unable to do cell damage, and this can reduce the effects of everyday aging.

Antioxidants are complete molecules that no matter whether, or not they donate one of their electrons to another molecule, they remain stable. Whereas free radicals are those molecules within our body that for one reason or another are incomplete. The free radicals desperately try to become complete by stealing electrons from complete molecules. Unfortunately when they do this, they then cause the donating molecule to become unstable and to in turn go off trying to make itself complete.

As this molecule steals an electron from another complete molecule, it is part of a chain reaction of damage among the molecules of cells which eventually results, in the death of those cells. The resulting death of human cells is how our aging process occurs. The more cells that die then the more our bodies show the effects of age and the more susceptible we become to age related illnesses like cancer, heart disease, arthritis and stroke.

Antioxidants slow this process down. When a free radical becomes stable by picking up an extra electron from an antioxidant, the chain of damage stops because the antioxidant molecule remains complete even after it has donated one of it's electrons. The aging process that would otherwise have occurred, does not.

Drinking five or more cups of Green Tea per day may help you lose that extra weight that you have been carrying around with you. The catechins within Green Tea are super antioxidants that are able to speed up your metabolism as well as your body's fat burning capabilities. These catechins seem to focus their fat attack on the fat that gathers around the waistline. So green tea may actually help to burn belly fat.

The results of studies involving the ingestion of green tea over a twelve week period found that consuming 690mg of catechins per day over 12 weeks did serve to reduce body fat. So in conclusion catechins may indeed be useful in the fight against obesity if you are willing to sip at least 5 cups of tea per day. The caffinated form works best!

The facts are that Tea contains four basic types of catechins: gallocatechin (GC), epigallocatechin (EGC), epicatechin (EC), and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG).

The most efficient of these catechins in green tea is EGCG which acts as a very powerful antioxidant within the human body.

You know that you don't do it as often as you should - it is a job that just seems to get set to the side time and time again.........

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Those few extra pounds can creep on pretty easily but to take them off again is just plain old hard. Losing weight is just not as easy as gaining it.

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Weight gain is usually a slow or gradual process over a lengthy period of time so the body does not view it as a threat to it's health. In fact the body happily just keeps storing that extra fat for future security if leaner years should occur in the future.....Read Full Article.

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http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/green-tea-000255.htm

http://nccam.nih.gov/health/greentea/

http://www.healthchecksystems.com/antioxid.htm

http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=146

http://altmedicine.about.com/cs/3/a/GreenTea.htm

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