Another Green Tea Discovery

As someone who works in the natural health profession, I’m well aware of the fact that heart disease is the number one cause of death in the United States. This fact is chief among the reasons why I’m so passionate about health, because I know that if more people started eating the right things, heart disease would not be the huge health problem that it is today.

How huge is it? Consider these estimates from the American Heart Association and Center for Disease Control and Prevention:

• In 2002, nearly one-third of all deaths in the United States was attributable to some form of heart disease.
  
  
• Heart disease is the leading cause of death among both men and women of various races and ethnicities (lead cause of death among blacks, whites, Native Americans and Hispanics).
  
  
• Estimates say that heart disease cost U.S. tax payers approximately $258 billion in health care, lost productivity, and medications in 2006.
  
  
• Heart disease took the lives of over 869,700 people in 2004 – one out of every 2.8 deaths that year.
  
  
• The reach of heart disease is not restricted to the elderly; almost 150,000 people that died from heart disease in 2004 were under the age of 65.

These are just some of the sobering statistics that show how heart disease remains a huge problem in America today, even though the death rate has dropped off significantly (i.e. 25 percent between 1994 and 2004). But the death rate could drop off even more precipitously if people start drinking green tea, this according to the latest heart-health discovery.

A recent study conducted at the Athens Medical School in Greece finds that drinking green tea can help prevent heart disease by improving blood flow throughout the body. The study is published in the European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation. Researchers came to this conclusion after studying 14 healthy individuals between the ages of 27 and 33. Each of the volunteers was instructed to take one of three things: 125 milligrams of caffeine, six grams of green tea (green tea has approximately 125 mg of caffeine) or hot water.

Usually, results – whatever they may be – start to bear by the study’s conclusion. But with this study, the results were almost immediate. Those who drank the 6 grams of green tea had an almost immediate improvement in endothelial function, one of the ways the researchers were able to determine the effectiveness of caffeine, green tea or hot water on the patients’ heart function.

The endothelium is composed of cells that line the entire circulatory system and allow for greater blood flow within the blood vessel walls. How well it is functioning determines how efficiently blood is coursing through the body. As such, a dysfunctional endothelium can often be a predictor of various heart-related diseases, like atherosclerosis, or a hardening of the arteries.

Suffice it to say, this is great news for the natural health community, the medical health community, and for anyone who enjoys tea. If you’ve never been much of a tea drinker, perhaps this can be the nudge you need to become one. In the process, you’ll become a member of the other “green” movement; a movement that’s sure to catch fire thanks to the latest green tea discovery.