The Magic Elixir of Life

Imagine a drink that make you look young and slim, leave longer life and cause wounds to heal faster, help to protect you from devastating diseases and kill cancer cells…..Sound like a fantasy? In fact, that drink already exists and people have bon consuming it for thousands of years. The magical elixir that’s causing scientists to marvel is green tea.
What makes green tea so special? Regular consumption of both green and black tea is associated with better health and longer life, but researchers are finding that green tea is more effective that black tea at protecting cells against DNA damage and cancer.
Why is that as we know that all teas come from the same plant; Cameillia sinensis. The leaves of Camellia sinensis are rich in a substance called epigallocatechin-3-gallate, or EGCG, which is a catechin, or a sub-group of chemicals found in tea that are part of the larger family of polyphenols. EGCG is being studied as perhaps the most powerful health-promoting chemical, which act like a medicine to fight many diseases.
What sets green tea apart is the way it is processed. Green tea leaves are steamed, which prevents the EGCG compound from being oxidized. By contrast, black tea is fermented, a process that neutralizes many of the ply-phenols. It tastes good, but many of the protective chemicals are lost.
Benefits Links have being made between the effects of drinking green tea and the “French Paradox” For years, researchers were puzzled by the fact, that despite consuming a diet rich in fat, the French have a lower incidence of heart disease than Americans. The answer was found to lie in red wine, which contains resveratrol, a polyphonol that limits the negative effects of smoking and and fatty diet. In a 1997 study, researchers from the University of Kansas determined that EGCG is twice as powerful as resveratrol, which may explain why the rat of heart disease among Japanese men is quite low, even though approximately 75% are smokers.
This was an example of ability of EGCG to prevent and reduce inflammation, now recognized as the underlying cause of the heard disease, diabetes, obesity and other illnesses.
Another cause of illnesses and Aging are free radicals, which cause cells, tissues and organs to break down or decay. EGCG is acting here as one of the most powerful antioxidants. In fact, researchers at Kansas university have found that EGCG is at least 100 times more effective that vitamin C and 25 times better than vitamin E at protecting cells and their DNA from damage caused by free radicals.
Among the most remarkable benefits of green tea is its tendency to trigger the destruction of cancer cells and tumours. Healthy cells when mature normally become a part of specific organ or system, Some become skin cells, others from part of the eye, or liver, or heart for example – this is a process known as differentiation.
The problem with cancer cells is that they have lost the ability to differentiate. EGCG forces cancer cells to perform normal functions and when they cannot carry out those functions, the cells self-destruct.
There are many more health properties being revealed by scientific studies, including the weight loss, prevention from High Cholesterol, , Reducing high blood pressure, Lowers blood sugar, Prevent bad breath, Antiseptic properties and many others and everyone can benefit from it …. If you know how to drink it.

How to Drink it?
In order to obtain the maximum amount of polyphenols in the tea, you should be sure to get the highest quality available. Conventional agriculture, with its heavy use of pesticides and herbicides, destroy many of the polyphenols in green tea. Moreover, conventional growing also can introduce heavy metals into the tea, which further corrupts the tea’s health effects. In addition, many green teas are exposed to chemical solvents during processing. These solvents are often laced in the tea when it finally reaches the consumer.
The best way is to dink tea that has been organically grown – then you don’t’ get the toxins and the tea is the highest quality. It’s a little more money, but there is no risk of contamination.

Boiling water and than pouring over green tea does not cause any losses of the EGCG or other polyphenols. Green tea can stand temperatures of up to 120 centigrade without losing its protective polyphenols. But if you allow it to sit in water for too long, or you leave it out in the air, than the plyphenols are lost. The best thing to do is to brew the tea and drink it.
How much Green Tea should you drink? There are as many answers to this question as there are researchers investigating the natural properties of Green Tea. Some of them say you need to dirnk at least 10 or 6 cups per day to reach the maximum benefits, and some of them, like a University of California study on the cancer-preventative qualities of green tea concluded that you could probably attain the desired level of polyphenols by drinking merely two cups per day.

Given all the evidence, it is probably safe to plan on drinking four to five cups of green tea per daily. If you’re a real devotee, by all means drink more; but whether or not you’ll derive added health benefits remains to be determined by further research.
No matter how you get your green tea catechins – as a supplement or a standard cup of tea – the important point is to get them. So the next time you are enjoying that pleasant little drink, you can toast a friend, or even yourself, as Russian say: Na Zdorovie, that’s mean: “ To our health”, and this time know that it’s really true.