Healthy Me - At Home and Away: Green tea

Showing posts with label Green tea. Show all posts

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Tea and Fat Burning

Green Tea (Photo credit: bkajino)

I for one will still drink green tea every morning...
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The New York Times International Weekly
Science & Technology
FINDINGS

Tea and Fat Burning

Green tea extract is one of the most popular workout supplements on the market, used widely by athletes looking to increase fat-burning effects of exercise.

One of the key compounds in green tea is Epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG, a potent antioxidant.

Supporters say it reduces fat gain and enhances fat-burning. But the amount found in a cup of green tea is not enough to have much effect.

Green tea extracts, more richly concentrated with EGCG, may not be much better. In a study published in December in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, scientists looked at its effects on a group of 31 healthy men. Over a weeklong period, one group consumed a supplement twice daily – the equivalent of eight cups of green tea a day – while another group was given a placebo. A third group was given a placebo for six days and then the extract on the seventh day. At the start and end of the week, the men rode stationary bikes at “an exercise intensity known to elicit maximal fat oxidation.”

The researchers did extensive testing, all of which indicated that the green tea extract did not have a meaningful effect on the body’s ability to burn fat.

ANAHAD O’CONNOR

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Article taken from TODAY Paper, Saturday Edition, 05-Jan-2013

Monday, July 26, 2010

Green Tea Against Leukemia

Image by prakhar via Flickr

Found this one article in the web, and while it is not yet conclusive, take note, the study has not been finalized, a glimmer of hope is already grasped by the researchers - and thus, this article is published.

Do comment if this is already completed and finalized, especially when the outcome is strongly beneficial.

In the meantime, read on...
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Green Tea Compound May Fight Leukemia
Early Study Shows EGCG Supplements May Delay Need for Chemotherapy in Some Patients

By Charlene Laino
WebMD Health News

Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD

TAZO China Green Tips Green Tea, 20-Count Tea Bags (Pack of 6)

June 9, 2010 (Chicago) -- Supplements that contain a chemical found in green tea show promise for delaying or preventing the need for chemotherapy in people with early-stage chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).

The chemical is called epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). In a small preliminary studyof 42 CLL patientswho took pills containing EGCG, about one-third showed a 20% or greater drop in their leukemia cell count that was sustained for at least several months.

Since the patients in the study had such early-stage disease that most had no symptoms, the FDA and the researchers agreed that a drop in leukemia cell count would be used as a surrogate marker for disease activity, says study head Tait Shanafelt, MD, a hematologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

In the 29 patients who had enlarged lymph nodes, 20 saw their node size cut in half or more following treatment, he tells WebMD.

Bigelow Organic Green Tea, 40-Count Boxes (Pack of 6)

Patients took the EGCG pills twice a day for six months. EGCG was generally well tolerated, but three patients had serious side effects: one had abdominal pain, one had severe fatigue, and one had substantially elevated liver enzymes.

The findings were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting.

Laboratory studies in a variety of tumor types have shown that EGCG cuts off the nutrient-rich blood supply to tumors and directly kills off cancer cells, Shanafelt says. Last year his team published a small study showing EGCG appears to be safe.

If the findings are confirmed and long-term safety established in larger, longer studies, the hope is that EGCG supplements can delay or prevent chemo, he says.

CLL is a very slow growing leukemia, he says. "So for the 70% to 80% of patients diagnosed at an early stage, we wait for the development of symptoms to start chemotherapy," Shanafelt says.

Yogi Green Tea Kombucha, Herbal Tea Supplement, 16-Count Tea Bags (Pack of 6)

The other potential niche is to use ECCG as maintenance therapy to prevent recurrence in patients who are in remission, Shanafelt says.

EGCG supplements can be bought at any health food store, and Shanafelt says he receives about one email a month from CLL patients who claim they help.

Pending further study, Shanafelt doesn't advise taking the supplements, which contain much more EGCG than you can get from green tea.

But if you are going to swallow them, at least tell your oncologist and get blood tests to check your liver enzymes every six weeks, he says.

Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center's John Byrd, MD, who served as discussant for the presentation, says that patients who saw early reports of effectiveness in the literature often ask him if they should be taking EGCG.

Rishi Tea Organic Jasmine Pearl Loose Tea, 3-Ounce Tin (Pack of 2)

The new findings suggest EGCG is generally well tolerated and appears to have some benefit for some patients, he says.

But much more work is needed, Byrd says.

This study was presented at a medical conference. The findings should be considered preliminary as they have not yet undergone the "peer review" process, in which outside experts scrutinize the data prior to publication in a medical journal.
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From WebMD.com; source article is below:
Green Tea Compound May Fight Leukemia
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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Cream with green tea extract hinders HIV transmission: study

Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 20-May-2009 02:41 hrs

A cup of green tea. A chemical found in green tea helps inhibit sexual transmission of the virus which causes AIDS, said a study Tuesday that recommends using the compound in vaginal creams to supplement antiretrovirals.

A chemical found in green tea helps inhibit sexual transmission of the virus which causes AIDS, said a study Tuesday that recommends using the compound in vaginal creams to supplement antiretrovirals.

Medical experts at Germany's University of Heidelberg said the compound could be a low-cost arrow in the quiver of medical weapons to fight the spread of HIV in research-poor countries.

The researchers said they determined that the green tea polyphenol, or vegetable tannin, called epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) is capable of neutralizing a protein in sperm which serves as a vector for viral transmission during sex.

EGCG degrades what is known as a semen-derived enhancer of virus infection, or SEVI, described in the study as "an important infectivity factor of HIV."
Writing in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers said they "recently identified a peptide fraction in human semen that consistently enhanced HIV-1 infection."

SEVIs capture viral elements and attach them to the surface of target cells, enhancing cell fusion and decreasing a cell's ability to repel viral threats.

EGCG "targets SEVI for degradation" and "abrogates semen-mediated enhancement of HIV-1 infection in the absence of cellular toxicity," said the researchers, some of whom work at the university's Heinrich-Pette-Institute for Experimental Virology and Immunology.

Because of its effects on semen-based HIV transmission threats, the study's authors said "EGCG appears to be a promising supplement to antiretroviral microbicides to reduce sexual transmission of HIV-1."

With the vast majority of the world's 33 million people with HIV infected through heterosexual sex, and as 96 percent of new infections occur in poor and developing nations, researchers said the use of green tea EGCG in topical creams would "provide a simple and affordable prevention method" to guard against HIV transmission.

Green tea, which originated in China and is widely consumed in Asia, the Middle East and growing numbers of western countries, is already popular for its antioxidant qualities. — AFP

From TODAYOnline.com; see the source article here.

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Like the cure but not the tea?

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Hot tea linked with throat cancer

English: Hot China-tea - no sugar, no milk (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Are you a tea drinker? Do you wait until your tea gets a bit cold before you sip it? Or right away, while it is smoking hot, you sip it?

Well, today I saw the news that links drinking of hot tea to the risk of throat cancer: the hotter the tea, the higher the risk.

Read the story here.

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A healthier alternative