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Anyone try green tea

IThinkImTurningJapanese

Senior Member
Messages
3,492
Location
Japan
There's much more to Green Tea than just caffeine.

Lifehack - 11 Health Benefits of Green Tea

Here’s a list of green tea’s amazing benefits — benefits that you may not have been aware of. Some of these benefits are still being debated, so please do your own research if you want to use green tea for medicinal purposes.

  1. Weight Loss. Green tea increases the metabolism. The polyphenol found in green tea works to intensify levels of fat oxidation and the rate at which your body turns food into calories. Check out this article if you want to find out more about this: Is Drinking Green Tea An Effective Way For Weight Loss?
  2. Diabetes.Green tea apparently helps regulate glucose levels slowing the rise of blood sugar after eating. This can prevent high insulin spikes and resulting fat storage.
  3. Heart Disease.Scientists think, green tea works on the lining of blood vessels, helping keep them stay relaxed and better able to withstand changes in blood pressure. It may also protect against the formation of clots, which are the primary cause of heart attacks.
  4. Esophageal Cancer.It can reduce the risk of esophageal cancer, but it is also widely thought to kill cancer cells in general without damaging the healthy tissue around them.
  5. Cholesterol. Green tea reduces bad cholesterol in the blood and improves the ratio of good cholesterol to bad cholesterol.
  6. Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.It is said to delay the deterioration caused by Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Studies carried out on mice showed that green tea protected brain cells from dying and restored damaged brain cells.
  7. Tooth Decay. Studies suggests that the chemical antioxidant “catechin” in tea can destroy bacteria and viruses that cause throat infections, dental caries and other dental conditions
  8. Blood Pressure. Regular consumption of green tea is thought to reduce the risk of high blood pressure.
  9. Depression.Theanine is an amino acid naturally found in tea leaves. It is this substance that is thought to provide a relaxing and tranquilizing effect and be a great benefit to tea drinkers.
  10. Anti-viral and Anti-bacterial.Tea catechins are strong antibacterial and antiviral agents which make them effective for treating everything from influenza to cancer. In some studies green tea has been shown to inhibit the spread of many diseases.
  11. Skincare.Green tea can apparently also help with wrinkles and the signs of aging, This is because of their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. Both animal and human studies have demonstrated that green tea applied topically can reduce sun damage.
 

pamojja

Senior Member
Messages
2,399
Location
Austria
I love other teas but green tea tastes so bitter.

I actually love the taste, but also sweeten with Stevia-extract. However, there are so many healthy herbal teas (at the moment tulsi is my favorite), I rather get a hefty dose of green tea as GTE capsules, rounded with some addtional theanine powder.
 

PatJ

Forum Support Assistant
Messages
5,288
Location
Canada
I tried green tea and loved the extra mental energy I got from it. After a few weeks I started feeling increasing cold. I stopped drinking it (3 cups per day) and it took at least 5 days before I felt back to normal. Now I just have a cup every so often.

A member here on PR posted a possible reason for feeling cold from green tea:
From bluelemonade on PR:
Green tea comes from the Camelia Sinensis plant, just like white and black tea. I found out the hard way that tea is not as healthy as everyone says. It can suppress thyroid function. For me, over the course of two years after I started drinking it, I slowly became irritable, depressed, introverted, tired, and my feet got colder and colder. I didn't think it was related to the tea of course. In fact, I drank even more tea because of feeling cold. But the tea plant is grown usually in China and India where the soil contains a lot of aluminum and fluoride. The tea plant is unique in that it absorbs both, and concentrates them in the leaves, which then go into our tea. Organically grown tea has this problem too.

The most dangerous aspect of tea is that it's effect on the thyroid will not show in routine blood tests. Tea lowers TSH, so you end up with what is clinically called "secondary hypothyroidism", and this can only be seen in the more extensive testing not routinely done.
 

Judee

Psalm 46:1-3
Messages
4,497
Location
Great Lakes
One cup makes me feel slightly better if I'm coming down with a cold or flu.

Since @Hip talked about it in this post: https://forums.phoenixrising.me/thr...combo-also-work-for-enterovirus-me-cfs.80221/ I've tried it twice with zinc and it must cause an immune reaction because each time I end up getting a slight fever later in the day.

And I also think it tastes bitter but I tend to say, "It just tastes too green." because if the color green had a flavor this would be it.
 

pogoman

Senior Member
Messages
292
Green tea extract helps lipolysis, the breaking down of triglycerides into fatty acids used for energy by the body (simple explanation).
This review shows GTE and caffeine helped athletic performance.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27465721/

There are a number of lipolytic supplements available on the market, but this review focuses on natural ingredients such as caffeine, green tea extract, L-carnitine, Garcinia cambogia (hydroxycitric acid), capsaicin, ginseng, taurine, silk peptides and octacosanol, all of which have shown scientific evidence of enhancing fat metabolism associated with improving endurance performance. We excluded some other supplements owing to lack of data on fat metabolism or endurance capacity. Based on the data in this review, we suggest that a caffeine and green tea extract improves endurance performance and enhances fat oxidation.

I have super high triglycerides and have been looking into supplements to help reduce them by improving lipolysis.
I'm also trying taurine in addition to GTE.
 

Seven7

Seven
Messages
3,444
Location
USA
Green tea is a TH2 shifter, I had my immune system shifted (there was some talk about CFS being TH@ shifted) so even is great for some people, is bad for other TH2 shifted diseases. So it crashes me really bad
 

Wishful

Senior Member
Messages
5,751
Location
Alberta
Green tea is a TH2 shifter,

It's probably not quite that simple. I expect that many (most?) health claims of this nature are actually more along the lines of "Using the equivalent of drinking 3000 cups a day in an in-vitro experiment, we found that TH2 shifted 5%". Drinking one cup a day, or even several cups a day, probably won't have a noticeable effect on TH2 or anything else. It's not impossible for it--or any other herbal remedies--to have an effect at low doses, but I expect it's fairly uncommon.

That said, go ahead and try green tea and see if it has a noticeable effect on you. We're all different, so what works or doesn't work for one person has little meaning for what will work for you.
 

raghav

Senior Member
Messages
809
Location
India
Green tea is an anti fungal.
From google
Based on these results, it is possible to conclude that green tea has strong and broader spectrum of antifungal activity against Candida group fungi and antifungal activity shown by tea extracts is probably due mainly to the catechin EGCG and perhaps EGC.
 

wabi-sabi

Senior Member
Messages
1,492
Location
small town midwest
I expect that many (most?) health claims of this nature are actually more along the lines of "Using the equivalent of drinking 3000 cups a day in an in-vitro experiment, we found that TH2 shifted 5%".
So funny and yet so true.

I like the taste of green tea and drink it sometimes when I can tolerate the caffeine.
 

Avena

Senior Member
Messages
138
I love other teas but green tea tastes so bitter.
There are many types of green tea... If you want to get used to pure green tea without added taste or sweetness, Japanese Sencha is often an easy start.
 

gbells

Improved ME from 2 to 6
Messages
1,494
Location
Alexandria, VA USA
This is the answer! I drink different kinds of green tea all day. I have severe ME and I have never expected or experienced it to help my ME.

Well don't drink too much. It's bad for the thyroid if you drink too much.

Role of Green Tea: Thyroid function can be impaired by green tea extracts at high doses. A significant decrease in serum T3 and T4 and increase in TSH levels has been reported along with decreased TPO and deiodinase activity in response to dietary green tea extract in rats.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ar...le of Green Tea: Thyroid,extract in rats [37].
 

Cipher

Administrator
Messages
880
Well don't drink too much. It's bad for the thyroid if you drink too much.

Not according to human studies:

Our review does not support a causal relationship between consumption of green tea preparations and thyroid toxicity. The observations of thyroid dysfunction were inconsistent across animal toxicity studies, and there is lack of reported hypothyroidism AEs in the human studies. This is further corroborated by an absence of epidemiological evidence that links green tea consumption to any adverse health effect on thyroid functions despite the prominence and long history of tea consumption. It is well documented that rodents are highly sensitive to goitrogenic agents in comparison to humans because they lack high-affinity thyroxine-binding globulin which is present in humans, and the plasma half-life of T4 in rats (12–24 h) is much shorter than in humans (5–9 days). Male rats are especially sensitive to thyroid toxicants because of their higher circulating levels of TSH than female rats (Capen, 1996, 1997; Dohler et al., 1979; Jahnke et al., 2004; McClain, 1989). The reported thyroid toxicity associated with GTE consumption in a few rodent studies may not bear direct relevance to normal green tea consumption in humans considering the known interspecies difference in thyroid physiology. The reported changes in the absolute and relative weights of the testes and prostate glands and the levels of LH and testosterone in those studies are likely secondary effects to hypothyroidism in that hypothyroidism leads to growth retardation, reduced testicular and prostatic weights, and altered levels of reproductive hormones in laboratory animals (Choksi et al., 2003).

A systematic review of published toxicology and human intervention studies was performed to characterize potential hazards associated with consumption of green tea and its preparations. A review of toxicological evidence from laboratory studies revealed the liver as the target organ and hepatotoxicity as the critical effect, which was strongly associated with certain dosing conditions (e.g. bolus dose via gavage, fasting), and positively correlated with total catechin and epigallocatechingallate (EGCG) content. A review of adverse event (AE) data from 159 human intervention studies yielded findings consistent with toxicological evidence in that a limited range of concentrated, catechin-rich green tea preparations resulted in hepatic AEs in a dose-dependent manner when ingested in large bolus doses, but not when consumed as brewed tea or extracts in beverages or as part of food. Toxico- and pharmacokinetic evidence further suggests internal dose of catechins is a key determinant in the occurrence and severity of hepatotoxicity. A safe intake level of 338 mg EGCG/day for adults was derived from toxicological and human safety data for tea preparations ingested as a solid bolus dose. An Observed Safe Level (OSL) of 704 mg EGCG/day might be considered for tea preparations in beverage form based on human AE data.
Source

Green tea is a significant source of a type of flavonoids called catechins (Figure 1): including epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), epigallocatechin (EGC), epicatechin gallate (ECG), and epicatechin (EC). One 200 ml cup of green tea supplies 140, 65, 28, and 17 mg of these polyphenols, respectively
Source