It’s no secret that I love tea. First thing in the morning there’s nothing like my first sips of spiced black tea. I drink two cups of the black before switching to green tea for the rest of the day. At night before bed, my favorite is herbal sleepy time tea. Yup. I’m a tea drinker. And what I love almost as much as the tea, is reading about the health benefits of tea.
I recently read Dr. Ruth Buczynski’s post about Alzheimer’s disease prevention and thought I’d share the information with you. New science showed, at least in a test tube, that chemicals found in green tea and red wine reversed a common event found in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
The key event that leads to Alzheimer’s disease, scientists believe, is the accumulation of amyloid-beta peptides in the brain. These proteins build up, forming toxic balls which attach to nerve cells in the brain, causing them to malfunction.
Researchers hypothesized that changing the shape of these amyloid balls would prevent them from latching onto nerve cells, which would stop the damage.
So they formed amyloid balls in tests tubes, inserted them in human and animal brain cells, and then added extracts from green tea and red wine.
The two extracts they used were epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) from green tea and resveratrol from red wine.
The two extracts did, indeed, re-shape the amyloid balls, preventing them from causing harm to brain cells in the test tubes.
While this is great news, it’s one small study that needs a lot more work before we can know if drinking green tea can prevent Alzheimer’s disease.
It is, however, one more reason for me to continue drinking mine with a big smile!
Best of Health,
Kathi
