green tea extract

Health Benefits of Green Tea

There are four primary polyphenols in green tea and they are often collectively referred to as catechins.

Powerful antioxidants, catechins have been shown in recent studies to fight viruses, slow aging, and have a beneficial effect on health. Clinical tests have shown that catechins destroy free radicals and have far-reaching positive effects on the entire body....

Green Tea and Weight Loss

If you drink green tea you can-

Lower cholesterol
Increase Thermogenesis (the body's rate of burning calories)
Enhance fat oxidation

Japanese green tea burns fat naturally.
Green tea contains high concentrations of catechin polyphenols. These compounds work with other chemicals to intensify levels of fat oxidation and thermogenesis, where heat is created in the body by burning fuels such as fat. Drinking Japanese green tea regularly will increase your metabolism and help burn fat safely and naturally....

The Japanese custom of drinking green tea came from China about 800 AD. The use of tea started when Buddhist monks, who had gone to China for study, returned to Japan bringing tea with them as a medicinal beverage. In the Kamakura era (1191-1333),the monk Eisai stressed the beneficial effects of tea in his book Maintaining Health by Drinking Tea (1211) : "Tea is a miraculous medicine for the maintenance of health. Tea has an extraordinary power to prolong life. Anywhere a person cultivates tea, long life will follow. In ancient and modern times, tea is the elixir that creates the mountain-dwelling immortal." From this passage we can see that green tea has from early times been highly valued as a powerful medication. But in recent years research into the effects of green tea has progressed so far it can now provide scientific confirmation for the legendary saying that "Tea is a miraculous medicine for the maintenance of health." It is becoming increasingly clear that green tea has a broad efficacy in preventing disease....

Cancer mortality statistics on Japanese people indicate that th death rate from cancer is significantly lower, for both men and women, i Shizuoka Prefecture. This fact stimulated our interest in cancer preventio and led us to calculate the death rate (Standardized Mortality Ratio) b cancer type for every city, town and village in Shizuoka Prefecture. Based on these death ratio statistics, we created a cancer distribution map of the Prefecture and examined it in detail for trends. We found that areas devoted to green tea production in the central and western regions of Shizuoka Prefecture exhibit a significantly lower death rate for all types of cancer in general and for gastrointestinal cancers such as stomach, esophagus and liver cancer in particular...

Cholesterol is always indicted as the "bad guyn for causing a wide range of diseases in adults. But it is a chemical present in all animals and crucial in human bodies for such important processes as the manufacture of cell membranes and the adhesion of cells. There are two types of cholesterol: one is the so-called bad cholesterol (LDL and VLDL- cholesterol) that accumulates in tissues and the other is the "good, cholesterol (HDL-cholesterol) that collects excessive cholesterol from the tissues. If the amount of bad cholesterol in the blood increases too much, it is deposited on the walls of blood vessels and can lead to atherosclerosis.

Green tea controls high blood pressure High blood pressure places a serious burden on the vascular system and contributes to atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis will in turn precipitate heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases. The cause of high blood pressure is not yet fully understood, but it is clear that a chemical called angiotensin II plays a role in high blood pressure due to essential hypertension and to arterial stenosis of the kidneys.

About 60 years ago, Dr. Minowada of Kyoto University noticed that sugar in the urine of patients hospitalized for diabetes fell markedly during periods when they participated in chanoyu (Tea Ceremony). He reported that powdered tea of the type used in the traditional Tea Ceremony had the capability of lowering blood sugar. Unfortunately, however, this important report was ignored due to the outbreak of World War II and the subsequent postwar food shortages. But the arrival of the gourmet era in recent years in Japan has led to heightened interest in diabetes and the ability of green tea to reduce blood sugar.
The sugars and carbohydrate in our food are digested mainly in the duodenum, converted there to glucose and then absorbed into the blood.

Oxygen is necessary for human life. But oxygen has two aspects, one beneficial and one malign. The oxygen we breathe is conveyed to every part of the body where it plays a key role in metabolism. But it can also be a very harmful agent in the form of active or free radical oxygen. Active oxygen is a problem because it can combine with anything in the body and oxidize it with consequentdestruction of cell membranes, damageto DNA and oxidation of lipids (fats). All of these can lead to diseases like cancer. Here we shall focus on the process by which active oxygen combines with lipids (fats) in the body to create lipid peroxide, that is, lipid with an excessive amount of oxygen. Lipid peroxide is thought to be a harmful substance which can trigger the diseases such as cancer, cardio-vascular disease and diabetes. Since lipid peroxide is more easily generated and less easily purged as age advances, it tends to accumulate in the body.

Tea contains caffeine which, when taken in the proper quantity, simulates every organ in the body. It has a particularly strong effect on the central nervous system, heart and liver. This reaction is even more pronounced when one is sleepy or tired. A cup of tea or coffee will help clear a dull mind after rising in the morning or after a prolonged period without sleep. The power to stimulate and awaken the mind comes from caffeine. It is also said that the amount of caffeine contained in normal servings of green tea can stimulate the skeletal muscles and facilitate muscular contraction. For this reason, it is quite helpful to drink tea or coffee in the middle of work to refresh the mind and restore the body.

Green tea deters food poisoning It has long been known from experience that green tea has the ability to kill bacteria. Consumption of strong green tea, for example, is often recommended as a good treatment for diarrhea.
Dr. Hara(#13) has shown in his research that catechin is a powerful sterilizing agent for many types of bacteria that cause food poisoning.

Dental techniques have improved greatly in the past few years, but once teeth have been damaged by cavities they can never be restored to their original condition. It is of the highest priority, therefore, to prevent cavities from developing in the first place. By the end of the 19th century, it had been determined that cartes are caused by cariogenic bacteria. The cariogenic bacteria first produce non-watersoluble glucan from sugar or other foods, and this glucan adheres to the tooth enamel as hard plaque. Next, they feed on sugar to generate acids such as lactic acid in the plaque. These acids then dissolve the tooth enamel. That in brief is the mechanism of cavity production.

Dr. Okada(#17) has noted the fact that tobacco growers use an exudat of green tea to prevent crop damage by the tobacco mosaic virus an verified that green tea catechin suppresses the growth of this virus. I addition, Prof. Shimamura(#18) has determined that green tea catechin and theaflavin (an oxidized form of catechin) present in black tea have a stron effect on the influenza virus. Green tea catechin and black tea theaflavi directly act on the influenza virus and inactivate it. It appears, therefore, that gargling with green or black tea is very effective in preventing influenza. This effect is increased by keeping the green tea catechin and the virus in contact as long as possible.

Discussions of food normally were focussed on its nutritional conten and its flavor. Recently, however, more attention is being paid to the role of food in bio-regulating functions. Foods that possess this regulatory function are called "functional food." Dr. Inaba(#20) classifies food by function. If we classify green tea and green tea catechin according to this table, they possess the following functions : (1) bio-defensing function by preventing cancer through fortification of the immune system, (2) disease-preventing function by preventing high blood pressure or diabetes, (3) disease-recovery function by inhibiting the rise of cholesterol, (4) physical rhythm-controlling function by stimulating the central nervous system with caffeine and (5) aging-suppressing function by roviding the body with antioxidants.