More Good Health News About Green Tea

We all know that green tea is healthy and good for you - after all they’ve been drinking it in China and Japan for thousands of years.  Green tea is not processed like black tea – in fact the leaves of the tea plant (camilla sinensis) is simply dried and then stored.  So green tea is very pure and natural. 

Now to get to the technical stuff.  There is a compound in green tea called EGCG (epigallocatechin-3-gallate, if you're interested).  This fact can be important to people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes because EGCG reduces the production of certain molecues that contribute to inflammation and joint damage.  Synovial fibroblast is a cell which helps lubricate the lining of joints.  This works fine for the majority of people but in certain rheumatic disorders, molecules like interleukin-1b stimulate the synovial fibroblasts to produce other molecules that start or extend a process of joint inflammation and destruction.  However, when investigators at the University of Michigan treated these synovial fibroblasts with EGCG and then stimulated them with interleukin-1b, they discovered that there was a significant reduction in the production of bone-eroding molecules.  Which equals good news with regard to easing the pain of people with rheumatoid arthritis.

As far as green tea and diabetes is concerned, researchers in Sweden compared the effects of EGCG with those of the antidiabetes drug Avandia in rats with diabetes. EGCG improved the animals' glucose levels as well as the amount of insulin they made in response to a glucose load. EGCG wasn’t as potent as Avandia, but it did have some of the same beneficial effects.  That could mean if you're a rat you should be drinking green tea, but most probably it's good for us humans with diabetes too.

EGCG is also in energy drinks and it's supposed to make it possible for these drinks to have a negative number of calories.  However, this is hardly a healthy choice in comparison with green tea.

Green tea has proven healthy for many many reasons, but now it could help people with diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis too.  It's certainly a compelling reason to add a cup or two of good quality green tea to your day.