by Lorelei Cohen

Created on: September 21, 2008   Last Updated: January 09, 2009

Sipping a nice hot relaxing cup of green tea a few times a day can make a tremendous difference in the quality of your health. Adding as few as one to four cups of green tea into your daytime schedule is enough to help you ward off, or slow down the symptoms of aging. It will also help reduce your likelihood of falling pray to age related illnesses such as cancer, cardiovascular illness, stroke and arthritis.

Green tea is unique from other teas in the degree of health benefits that offers. It all begins with the way that Green tea is processed. Black teas and Oolong teas come from the same plant that Green tea does, but they are fermented during processing, while Green Tea is not. Because Green Tea is allowed to remain closer to it's natural state, more of its high polyphenol or antioxidant content remains intact, so it retains the very compounds that give allow its amazing health giving properties.

Green tea not only has less caffeine than other teas but it is also loaded with polyphenols which are very powerful antioxidants. These beneficial antioxidants combine with the free radicals in the body. Free radicals being those molecules that for one reason or another are incomplete and unstable. The free radicals are trying to become stable by stealing electrons from complete molecules within the body. Unfortunately when they do this, they then cause the donating molecule to become unstable, and to then goes off trying to make itself stable again. This molecule then steals an electron from another complete molecule, which in turn becomes unstable. This chain reaction of cell damage is what results in the eventual death of healthy cells. It is this cell death that is the basis for our aging process. The more cells that die then the more our bodies show the effects of age and the more likely that we are to suffer from age related illnesses such as cancer, arthritis, cardiovascular disease and stroke.

Because antioxidants are stable or complete molecules, they can safely donate one of their electrons to another molecule without becoming unstable, they can stop this chain reaction of damage. They in effect, slow down the actual aging process, as well as the illnesses that accompany this process.

Green Tea also contains two very important compounds in the fight against Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Epicatechin or (EC) and epigallocatechin 3 gallate or (EGCG) are compounds that bind with the very components that cause these illnesses so help to prevent their formation within the brain. These compounds can actually slow down the progression of brain degeneration as we age.

There is one other benefit that Green tea has that makes it very unique from other teas, it has high levels of catechins, and these can increase the rate by which your fat cells metabolize. In other words, drinking four or more cups of green tea each day, can cause a reduction in the amount of fat that you retain around your midriff. That seems to be a pretty good reason in itself to be consuming that wonderfully warm and relaxing beverage on a regular basis. It sure beats the heck out of doing pushups.

So put your feet up, and relax with a nice hot cup of tea, your body will thank you for it later.

Sources:

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

http://chinesefood.about.com/library/weekly/aa011400 a.htm

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

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