Healthy Tip - Green Tea

Our Healthy Tip Fridays have moved from notes area of our fan page to our blog. For our blog followers, who are not fans of Marmalade Hills' on Facebook, I have posted a few Healthy Tip Fridays already. You can find them here.
Tea is the agricaltural product of the leaves, leaf buds, and internodes of the Camellia Sinensis plant, prepared and cured by various methods. After water, tea is the most widely-consumed beverage in the world, according to The Empire Of Tea by Alan Macfarlane.
I myself love to drink tea. In winter it is especially popular in our house, we can go through a box of tea in 4 or 5 days. I am sure everybody heard about many benefits of tea and especially green tea and probably I will not tell you anything new today, but I would like to bring to your attention the benefits of green tea once again. I think today's tip can be classified as "lazy healthy tip", right next to the fish oil :)

"More than a decade's worth of research about green tea's health benefits - particularly its potential to fight cancer and heart disease - has been more than intriguing, as have limited studies about green tea's role in lowering cholesterol, burning fat, preventing diabetes and stroke, and staving off dementia.

*Green tea's antioxidants, called catechins, scavenge for free radicals that can damage DNA and contribute to cancer, blood clots, and atherosclerosis. Grapes and berries, red wine, and dark chocolate also have potent antioxidants. Because of green tea's minimal processing - its leaves are withered and steamed, not fermented like black and oolong teas - green tea's unique catechins, especially epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), are more concentrated.

*Green Tea vs. Cancer. The American Cancer Society's strategic director of nutritional epidemiology, says human studies haven't yet proven what researchers like Chan have discovered in the lab: green tea's EGCG regulates and inhibits cancer growth and kills cells that are growing inappropriately. Still, it's difficult not to be intrigued by a few human studies that have shown that drinking at least two cups of green tea daily inhibits cancer growth. One of them, a study conducted in Japan that involved nearly 500 Japanese women with Stage I and Stage II breast cancer, found that increased green tea consumption before and after surgery was associated with lower recurrence of the cancers.

*Green Tea good for your heart? It seems to be, but there are conflicting results of a few epidemiological studies conducted in the East and West.
In a study that involved 500 Japanese men and women, researchers found that drinking at least four cups of green tea every day may be related to the reduced severity of coronary heart disease among the male participants. A Dutch study of more than 3,000 men and women found that the more tea consumed, the less severe the clogging of the heart's blood vessels, especially in women. As Goldberg suggests, lifestyle and overall diet are critical to the outcomes of these studies. But green tea's antioxidants are dilators, she says, because they improve the flexibility of blood vessels and make them less vulnerable to clogging - and antioxidant-rich blueberries and pomegranates do the same.

*Green Tea and Weight. Green tea and its extract have been shown to fight obesity and lower "bad" cholesterol - two risk factors for heart disease and diabetes - but in very limited studies.

*Green tea Straight Up. Taking weight loss supplements that contain green tea extract probably won't hurt, unless you have liver problems. But the best way to get the most out of green tea - even if your main goal is losing weight - is to drink it."

For complete article please follow this link: http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/health-benefits-of-green-tea

If you can not get enough of green tea in your cup try these products from Marmalade Hills' that are made with miracle green tea extract:
All Natural Facial Toners; Moisturizing Bath Bombs; Omega 3 Body Lotions.

P.S. if you have missed our previous healthy tips you can find them here:
Clean Truth about Antibacterial Soap
10 Foods that are healthier than you think
Healthy Nails Tips
Healthy Hair Tips
When to buy Organic and when it's ok not to
Benefits of Green Tea
Beauty Sleep
Fish Oil or Omega 3 & 6
How to add years to your life