smallest volume of tea for health

I read a few articles about this posted on Digg.com, and most articles seem to say 2-3 cups a day. I don't think the studies are very exact though. I found this article, which seems to be very official since it's a .gov site:

Hope that helps.

Desirea

Hi--

I don't get the impression that green tea has been *proven* to do

*anything*. Isn't more a set of speculations based on some correlations? (Right-- I'm *not* a scientist.)

I think this is why nobody can tell you that any given amount is

*sure* to be good for you. Which part should be measured to decide if there's "enough"?

But surely everybody on this group *knows* there's a big difference between the "green tea" you buy in American supermarkets (in tea bags!) and some fresh and very vegetal green tea. When I make fukamushi-cha (means deep-steam tea in Japanese) (????it is so *thick* and textured that it reminds me of the green tempera (no, not tempura ;-) )paint I used as a first-grader. It's fair to count it as a vegetable serving, I'd guess. Do 2 or 3 of those pallid supermarket tea-bag versions equal *one* cup of fukamushi-cha? Impossible.

Intuitively, I figure tea (both green and black) is good for me... but remember that a lot of naturalist-healers say that if someone has an aversion to a particular substance, it's best to steer clear of it-- personally, I'd work with that. If they don't like the smell of bergamot oil, use lavender oil. If they don't like tea, don't make them drink a "dose" every day: there might be a *reason* for their dislike.

(Though, yes... I know there *are* kids who are simply contrarian, and decide to pitch their battles over food...)

james-henry holland blissfully summering

Over time drink as little or as much as you like. Go down to the herb store and try different dried flowers and fruits. Rose bud in greeen tea is popular. I like honeysuckle. Or change your nationality and drink a British Breakfast blend with cream an sugar.

Jim

JWBH wrote:

I am a practitioner and I hope this helps. The suggested necessary amount of EECG - the polyphenol found in green tea that protects DNA against the damages of free-radicals is 270 mgs daily. This generally is the amount in 8 cups of green tea. I would suggest going to a natural foods store and getting some green tea extract (usually packaged free of caffeine) to give kids. Disclaimer: This is merely a suggestion and not to be used in lieu of traditional medical care Shen, N.D.

"I don't get the impression that green tea has been *proven* to do

*anything*. Isn't more a set of speculations based on some correlations? "

thats correct.

• these compounds have strong antioxidant activities in vitro. Such effects, however, have been harder to demonstrate in vivo and to correlate with disease prevention in vivo.

DO NOT take any green tea EXTRACT and give to KIDS.

• data suggest that high doses of EGCG can induce toxicity in the liver, kidneys, and intestine.

Hi JWBH

My suggestion is 3 cups a day. A lot of population studies documenting the health benefits of green tea is carried out in Asia. Typically, the folks there drink 3 cups.

However, the Chinese or Japanese typically drink loose green tea. A high grade can be infused 3 times. Therefore just 3 grams of tea (about 1 teabag) makes 3 cups. Using the Western way, it would be 3 teabags.

Having said that, I have seen scientific studies documenting health benefits with just 1-2 cups of green tea a day.

Is green tea health benefits proven? Maybe I should put it another way

- can we afford to wait?

To prove a health benefit requires a large number of studies, from cells culture to animal studies to small scale human trials and very well designed long term population studies. Needless to say, it takes years.

Many green tea benefits have been validated in the above-mentioned areas, but not all of them. Some are more controversial than others.

Regardless of the state of developments, scientists and doctors are urging us to drink it because it is healthy.

So why wait?

The comparison with black tea is more tricky. Scientists still cannot show conclusively that green tea is more healthy than black tea. But one thing is clear: there is a lot more population studies documenting green tea health benefits than black tea, and even the proportion of green tea studies that are positive (compared to negative) is higher than black tea. I am not preferring one over another, but on existing evidence, green tea has the upper hand.

While the West is obsessed with the science, the Chinese tends to look at this differently, as green tea and black tea has different effects on the body according to the Traditional Chinese Medicine. One is cooling and the other is warming. We can drink them according to the season, body conditions etc. There is a place for both.

Sorry for the waffling over a friday night ... hope it helps:)

Julian

I would say that as long as you are drinking SOME tea, it's better than nothing. Don't worry about meeting any kind of minimum per day or anything - however you can keep a number (say 3 cups) in the back of your mind. Don't obsess over it though - you'll probably lose more health by worrying about it!

As to the person who said take green tea extract, I would disagree with that. Studies have proven that taking a substance out of its natural environment (i.e. green tea extract) gives a fraction of the percentage of the benefits you'd receive if you drank the real substance.

This happens because molecules are made to interact with each other in a synergistic way. When you take ECGC out of its natural environment, it's MUCH less potent.

I would suggest possibly take a green tea extract supplement on top of the tea you drink if you don't feel you're getting enough.

Jeremy

It's common sense to follow the dosing directions on the bottle. And, ECCG does not cause toxicity (where did you find that data!?) - it CAN contribute to malabsorption of iron if used excessively. Kids can take 10 drops per day in 8 oz water. It is contra-indicated if one is taking Coumadin or other blood thinners, has tachycardia or hyperthyroidism. Too much can irritate the stomach or excite the bowels. There are questions as to whether it is safe with chemo. BTW, there are innumerable studies all over the web citing the benefits of green tea. Many abstracts, as well. In Chinese medicine we consider all food to be medicine. Be careful. Don't overdose. Use moderation etc. (Disclaimer) This is meant to be a suggestion and not to be used in lieu of traditional medical care. Shen

"Studies have proven" that prayer helps the objects of prayer even when they don't know about it, that collective meditation decreases urban violence, that ectoplasm cures cancer, etc. etc. Easy to refer to unspecified, non-objective authority in a case like this. Using (some of) the language of science doesn't make myth and hearsay science.

Made by whom, for the benefit of what organism? If this is a creationist discussion, let's please label it as such. If you have evidence that tea and people are commensal, symbiotic or otherwise co-evolved, I'd like to know more. Some of us believe that plants just happen, some just happen to be enjoyable, and none was "intended" for our benefit beyond the usually minor tweakings of cultivation. Most of the really nasty poisons in the world aren't "chemicals" (so-called) but "natural" metabolites of plants and fungi, and many occur in staples like manioc and the olive.

Also, less potent than what, for what? Are ill-effects of many plant compounds also diminished in a happenstance gemisch? Does the beneficence of adventitious mixtures depend on extraction conditions?

EOR, for now.

-DM

A part of this I can vouch for: Dr. Larry Dossey (NIH) - Prayer Studies. The rest sounds a little like gobblity-gook. Shen

Just out of curiosity, is that a form of koicha or are you taking about a kind of brewed tea?

Alex

It's more about lifestyle. In China, people don't really measure how many cups they drink a day, week, month, or whatever. Most people drink tea in one form or another everyday a few times a day. If the person in your family doesn't dig green tea, either try to find a better green tea or try to find some other "anti-cancer" bandwagon to jump on.

Fighting cancer in the mind of most of the people around me actually never occured to them.

and then.................................there is karma. Shen

Sorry to be naive in public. Blame my rhetoric instructors, not their victim. I don't understand the proposition "compounds exist as isolates within..." - seems oxymoronic, at least to this organic chemist, so I don't know if I believe it or not. I was attempting to make two points:

- Biochemistry may be an ever-unfolding mystery, but it's not magic.

- Most plant biochemistry evolved well before humans came on the scene (if you believe in evolution).

And, by extension, a third: a lot of strong assertions on this NG, presented as established/received fact, seem more like myth, legend, new-agey belief, wishful thinking, projection or unintended deletion/distortion/generalization.

Adding those up, it seems to this naive observer specious to assert either that plant extracts are automatically beneficial (and that other-sourced chemicals are not), or that the adventitiously occurring mix of partially cooked structural components, raw materials, waste products, metabolites, defense secretions and genetic fragments delivered by one arbitrary set of extraction procedures should be considered health-optimal for us, and all others not.

Luckily, understanding this won't stop me from enjoying a cup of tea. Quite the reverse, as it avoids obsessive thinking about health, nutrition, cancer prevention and a host of other hallucinations that could otherwise stand between whatever presence I can bring forward and the taste, aroma, warmth and other sensory attributes, and all the associations that follow them, in a nice cuppa.

-DM

Plant extracts act differently than the raw material, because the raw material contains a large number of different similar compounds, and if you take a small slice out of that variety of compounds, you get only a subset of the action of those compounds.

This can be an excellent thing in the case of sassafras for instance, where the raw sassafras oil contains known cancer-causing agents but a purified extract does not.

It can be a mixed thing, as well. For example, people who smoke marijuana claim that the pure THC extract sold as "marinol" is not as abusable as the raw material.

It can also be a bad thing, too. Pure vanillin tastes very different than real vanilla extract, because the actual plants contain a wide variety of different similar compounds which all contribute to the vanilla flavour.

So, saying that extracting a pure compound from a raw plant material is always a bad thing isn't describing more than a tiny part of the real story.

Precisely. And so many health problems today are caused by stress... sitting down and relaxing with a cup of tea is probably of greater benefit to your health than any compounds you might be ingesting along with it.

--scott

It is an accepted fact in the scientific community that even though green tea main antioxidants are the catechins, the presence of other compounds have a synergistic effect.

To quote Cabrera (Beneficial effects of green tea - a review 2006, Journal of the American College of Nutrition):

Green tea ... catechins are ... strong antioxidants. In addition, its content of certain minerals and vitamins increases the antioxidant potential of this type of tea.

And at least one other studies that I'm too lazy to look up and quote :)

Having said that, green tea extract does have its place, for people who just can't make themselves drink tea, for the next generation of green tea medicine, for scientists to conduct experiments and better understand the biochemistry of tea ... and for commercial companies to transform low grade tea leaves to high profit margin products.

I guess it's just the wrong thing to mention in this type of forum, but if anyone knows of any good products (or how to spot a good product), I wouldn't mind knowing.

:)

Julian

vitamin e is an antioxidant vitamin c is an antioxidant glutathione is another antioxidant yes they are ALL 'NATURAL' and already in the human body, thats how we are still alive.

there are innumerate antioxidant reactions all the time in the human body and they dont need green tea. people who dont have them,,, DIE,,, and green tea vitE,C etc wont save them. gene therapy might but thats another thing...well nadph oxidase , oxidative burst , eh, not really good example i have here...

hows g6pd deficiency, thats a deficit of "antioxidants" try 'cure' that with vitamins and whathaveyou ...

but when people dont know the whole picture, its easy for someone to come along and say "YES, we have a NATURAL ANTIOXIDANT for YOU" come and eat it. it does a body good. "THERE ARE STUDIES" ... dont tell me the conclusion, what is the power of the study, p value etc etc.

no, in the end it wont help you, get over it , just DRINK THAT TEA AND ENJOY IT.

eh, rant...me need some sleep..