Green Tea and The Japanese Paradox | Women Lifestyle, Fashion, Health, Beauty and Personality

Green Tea and The Japanese Paradox
Category : Women Health

Scientist now believe that a powerful antioxidant called ECG (from a chemical family known as catechins) in green tea helps explain the â€œJapanese Paradoxâ€ in the same way resveratrol accounts for the â€œFrench Paradox.â€ In a resent study, researchers from the University of Kansas determined that ECG in green tea is twice as powerful as resveratrol, which may help explain why the rate of hearth disease among Japanese men is quite low compared to their U.S. counterparts, despite the fact that approximately 75 percent of Japanese men smoke cigarettes.

People living in Asian countries have enjoyed the health benefits of drinking green tea and related teas, such as oolong, for over 4,000 years. Regrettably, many Americans rarely drink tea with regularity and therefore miss out on the anti-aging properties of this miraculous beverage.

A growing body of published evidence on the health benefits of ECG is helping green tea become more popular in the U.S. Within the last several years alone, over 50 studies have been published that support the consumption of green tea or green tea supplements for helping to prevent, treat and in some cases, kill, cancer cells.

Scientists have long observed that people who live in countries where tea is a staple beverage (mainly Japan and China) enjoy very low rates of cancer. In Japan, for example, women who teach the traditional tea ceremony (and thus drink large amounts of green tea) tend to live longer and healthier lives than others and they enjoy an exceptionally low death rate from cancer. Surprisingly, Japanese smokers who light up more cigarettes than their American counterparts enjoy the lowest rate of lung cancer in the industrialized world! Researchers have also confirmed that higher consumption of tea reduces the risk of cancer including breast, prostate, lung, colon, stomach, pancreatic, leukemia, glioma and skin cancer. These disease-fighting properties alone would be enough to persuade most reasonably same people to become devoted green tea drinkers.

Green Tea Helps You Cut Carbs and Burn Fat
The Atkins and South Beach diets have turned the U.S. into a nation of carbophobes. If fear of carbs now haunts your every waking hour, then you may be interested to learn that green tea can help you atone for the uncontrollable carbohydrate carvings and ensuing carb gluttony you will eventually experience on these diets. A phytonutrient found in green tea (and in onions) called diphenylamine, possesses potent blood sugar-lowering activity. This carb-cutting effect will not take place if you only take green tea dietary supplements (active ingredient: ECG) without actually drinking green tea. ECG supplements can be used to treat many health conditions, but itâ€™s preferable to also ingest the entire complex of bioactive compounds present in tea for optimal results.
Over half a century ago, Dr. J. Minowada of Kyoto Unversity reported to the Japanese government that sugar in the urine of hospitalized diabetics fell when they comsumed green tea. His report went largely unnoticed due to the commencement of World War II and subsequent postwar food shortages. But recently published studies on the sugar-lowering effects of green tea have rekindled interest in the anti-diabetic effects of green tea. Even if you are not a diabetic, you can still benefit from the blood sugar-lowering properties of green tea.

Recent studies have also shown that green tea plus caffeine (a typical cup of green tea can contain between 30 and 60 milligrams of caffeine depending upon steeping time and portion size) consumption will increase the bodyâ€™s metabolic rate for a 24-hour period. Caffeine consumption alone does not account for this rise in metabolic rate. Researchers believe that certain compounds in green tea possess thermogenic properties that work synergistically with caffeine in promoting body fat loss.

Green tea also mimics the life-extending effects of calorie restriction, which lowers blood sugar and insulin levels and reduces the damage to organs caused when sugar complexes with cellular proteins. Green tea also reduces iron absorption (iron overload can lead to organ damage, hearth disease and cancer), so unless youâ€™re prone to anemia, this is a desirable effect. If you drink three or more cups of tea each day and you are anemic or prone to anemia, check with a physician to find out how to reduce the likelihood of anemia.