Antioxidants

EGCG, or epigallocatechin gallate, is what makes green tea so healthy. EGCG is just one of many, many different antioxidants. For example, you’ve probably heard of lycopene before; if nowhere else, advertised on a bottle of Heinz ketchup. Watermelon also has high concentrations of lycopene. So, green tea has antioxidants. What sorts of things can EGCG do?

Cancer

One of the major things that recent studies have revealed is that EGCG reduces carcinogenesis. In other words, it prevents cancer. This is because the antioxidants neutralize free-radicals, which cause cancer. Many different types of cancer can be helped. For example, cancers of the esophagus, lungs, prostate, stomach, and others. For more on the specifics of how antioxidants prevent cancer, take a look at the article below on antioxidants.

Oral Health

Green tea is also said to help oral health; this is because of it’s high fluoride content. Fluoride is a major ingredient in many oral health products, such as toothpaste. It can help with the remineralization of teeth by attracting calcium and other essential minerals to places where enamel has broken down. This all to say green tea helps preventing tooth decay. Some people are concerned that if one consumes too much tea, it will result in toxic levels of fluoride. This is unlikely, because the amount of fluoride contained in green tea is small enough where one would have to drink gross amounts to sustain any serious health problems. On a minor note, green tea is said to reduce bad breath. Personally I find if I drink a cup before I go to bed, I don’t have morning breath.

Immnune System

It is also said green tea can build impaired immune systems up. A compound called Theanine is present in green tea. This compound can boost the ability of ‘gamma delta T cells’ to fight infections. A ‘gamma delta T cell’ is a type of white blood cell, which is the bodies main first line of defense. By strengthening the white blood cells, Theanine is basically better equipping the infantry of the body to fight against hostile forces.

Metabolism

Another thing green tea is said to do is speed up metabolism. Some say it is good to drink green tea after a meal to help break down food more effectively. Metabolism divided into two parts; catabolism and anabolism. Catabolism is the process that creates energy, and anabolism uses energy to complete tasks such as building cells. When your body breaks down food, certain damaging chemicals are produced; things such as hydrogen peroxide. To fight this, your body has a complicated set of enzymes to detoxify these chemicals. As you may have guessed, antioxidants can help to boost this process greatly. When the antioxidants mop up these chemicals, more of the enzymes can concentrate on breaking down food for energy, thus speeding catabolism (and thus metabolism).

Relaxation

It is also said that green tea can relax and calm the nerves. This may sound a bit absurd, but it really isn’t when you look closer. Green tea contains a compound called ‘Theanine’. Like Alcohol, this compound can cross the blood-brain barrier, but unlike alcohol, it does not have an adverse affect. It can relieve both mental and physical stress, and even in repeated extremely high doses has little or no adverse affects–physical or psychological.

Other Types of Tea

So, is green tea special? Is it much better than say, black tea? Or white tea? Well, originally, green tea was considered to be much better, which is understandable. Anything ‘green’ or ‘natural’ now-a-days immediately gains for itself a healthy connotation. Black tea is oxidized completely, while green tea is for the most part not. In the tea-making community, the oxidation process is called ‘fermentation’, although technically no fermentation is taking place. This has also contributed somewhat to the negative connotation of black tea. But recent studies suggest that black and other varieties of tea are just as good as green. So, whether you drink black, white, oolong or whatever else suits your tastes, you are still reaping the benefits that green tea has recently gained the reputation of.

Antioxidants. If you know anything about green tea and it’s health benefits, you’ve heard of antioxidants. You know that green tea can have lots of beneficial effects on your health. Much of these benefits come from the high levels of antioxidants in the tea. But what are antioxidants, and what exactly do they do? Good question.

Antioxidants are molecules, and they slow or prevent the oxidation of ‘free-radicals’ in your body. Free radicals are detrimental molecules that can cause a lot of damage to other molecules around them by stealing electrons. When one molecule steals electrons from another, this is called an oxidation reaction. Now what’s so bad about losing electrons you ask? Well, this can cause all sorts of problems, depending on the type of molecules free-radicals oxidise with.

Take oxygen. As you should know, oxygen is vital to most complex life-forms. But oxygen is also one of the most common free-radicals roaming your body. When an oxygen molecule is radicalized (when it loses electrons) it becomes positive in charge, and wants to take away electrons from other molecules around it. For example, an oxygen molecule steals electrons from a cell. This can permanently damage the cell’s DNA, and can cause a chain reaction that eventually leads to cancer. If the free-radical steals electrons from a protein, this can also cause a range of problems. ‘Enzyme Inhibition’ and ‘Protein Degredation’ are two of these problems. Enzyme Inhibition is when the free-radical embeds itself inside an enzyme; thus slowing or completely stopping the enzyme’s function. Protein Degredation is a little more complicated, but the free-radical ends up impairing immune system functionality.

So. Where do antioxidants fit into all that? Well, antioxidants react with, or ‘mop up’ the free-radicals in your body. They float around neutralizing the free-radicals by giving them electrons. By stopping the free-radicals, the antioxidants in green tea help to prevent cancer and fix impaired immune function.