True Brew: Drink Tea for Your Health
(Page 2 of 4)
December/January 2000
By Marguerite Lamb
But don't pass on the broccoli just yet, cautions Blumberg. For while your favorite Darjeeling may give you the same amount of flavonoids as a side of broccoli, it doesn't necessarily provide the same type. "You can't simply substitute the antioxidants of tea for the antioxidants of vegetables," says Blumberg, who stresses that a "network of antioxidants" is essential to good health.
RELATED CONTENT
If It's Herbal, It Ain't Tea
Don't let true tea connoisseurs catch you calling your favorite hot chamomile drink "tea." Technically, tea refers only to beverages brewed from the dried leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant. SSticklers will insist that all brews derived from the flowers, leaves or roots of other plants be called herbal "infusions" or tisanes (the French word for herbal beverages). While many herbal infusions tout their own health benefits (peppermint fights indigestion, ginger relieves nausea, chamomile calms the nerves), only "real" teas are known to contain catechins, the potent plant compounds that may help ward off cancer and heart disease.
TEA FOR YOUR TICKER
The oxidation of low-density lipoproteins (LDL, or "bad" cholesterol) in the blood is believed to be a chief cause of atherosclerosis, a thickening of arterial walls that can lead to heart attack or stroke. Antioxidants can help to prevent the oxidation of LDL, thereby reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease. And no brand of antioxidant may be more powerful in this regard than catechins, a type of flavonoid prevalent in tea.
Indeed, in a study conducted by Scranton University chemistry professor Joe Vinson, tea catechins proved ten times more effective than vitamins C, E and beta carotene at stopping the oxidation of LDL in a test tube. Vinson further found that black and green tea inhibited atherosclerosis in hamsters fed a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet - the more the hamsters drank, the better the results. In high doses, tea even lowered the animals' LDL, total cholesterol and triglycerides (yet another type of fat released into the bloodstream through the digestion of fatty foods). Good news for ill-fed hamsters, no doubt, but what about the rest of us?
