Transcription
I normally talk about eating to beat disease, and today I think we're talking about drinking to beat disease because tea is something that is even more natural to consume than eating food. We have to stay hydrated, but I think first among equals, I discovered through my own research, is tea. What does tea do? Tea helps our body's hardwired self-defenses resist disease. Today, I'm really happy to be talking about one of my favorite beverages, which is tea. I actually drink three to five cups of tea a day, and it's different kinds of tea that I enjoy. I love the taste, I love the experience, and I like how I feel after I have tea. Of course, there are a lot of health benefits associated with it, and I've actually been a researcher looking at the health benefits of tea.
So today, we're going to talk all about tea. We actually took tea that had been brewed and studied it in cancer research labs. In fact, I did some tea research with the National Cancer Institute. A lot of people don't know how you do this, but basically, brew tea, and then it's too hot to really do anything with, so you cool it and then refrigerate it. Some people ask, "Well, is it only hot tea that's good for you, or is iced tea any good for you?" Well, I can tell you that in the research lab, when we actually study tea, the tea gets refrigerated, so it's actually cold. Of course, then you have to warm it back up to room temperature before you can expose it to cells or give it to animals to drink or what have you.
The idea that brewing tea and changing the temperature does not affect its beneficial effects is really important because that means that hot tea or iced tea is actually good. We studied it in systems that were used for drug development, in other words, the same experimental models that are used to test cancer drugs. What we found was quite remarkable: not just any tea, but multiple teas—not single teas, but multiple teas—could actually have this cancer-starving effect by cutting off the blood supply. That's really good news, and it's kind of a new discovery in a way, but it builds on all the other reasons that tea could be beneficial to someone suffering from cancer. More frankly, if you don't have cancer, it could be a number of other conditions in which you want a beverage that can calm inflammation in your body, help you have better immunity, and feed your gut microbiome, which are the healthy gut bacteria that communicate with your immune system.
So, I think there are many reasons why tea is such a beneficial beverage, in addition to it being delicious. There are so many more ways to use tea. The most important thing I want people to know is that tea—green tea, brown rice tea, other types of tea, even black teas—actually activate your body's health defense systems. These are the hardwired systems that we were born with, and tea will activate them. When our health defenses are activated, our health is protected; it lowers our risk for multiple diseases. For something that tastes as good as tea, it's enjoyable as well, and tea is also quite relaxing, which I think is really important for all of you to know about.
I tested Japanese tea, Chinese jasmine tea, and Earl Grey black tea. My assumption or hypothesis was that you're going to actually see that Japanese teas, like matcha for example, would be the most potent. What I found was, in fact, that Earl Grey was the most potent when it comes to angiogenesis and starving cancer. Like, whoa! Black tea scented with bergamot is going to be the most potent tea when it comes to starving your cancer. That's not what the urban legend said, and that's not what the popular ideas suggested. So, I started realizing maybe there's an urban legend in there. Again, you know, science leads the way, and it's still true even if you don't believe it.
In my research, I studied Earl Grey tea, which was one of the most potent when it comes to angiogenesis. Then, Chinese tea and Japanese tea came in third. But what was crazy is that when we started to blend teas together, we just violated the rules of culture and said, "Yeah, let's go ahead and blend some Chinese and Japanese tea together. Let's mix them together, right? International!" So, we mixed them together, and what we found is that blending Chinese and Japanese tea created a tea synergy. The combination of both was more potent than either one alone or the additive activity of them when it came to angiogenesis control for starving cancer.
Tea is something that is even more natural to consume than eating food because we have to stay hydrated. Tea comes from a plant, and we know that plant-based foods are good for our health. That's now almost universally recognized. The leaf of the tea, which is what we steep, contains thousands of natural chemicals. We call them bioactives because they interact with our biology. Some of the compounds that are natural chemicals are like catechins, gallic acid, theanine, and theaflavins, and they all wind up in a cup of tea when you brew it.
Some of the amazing things that have been shown by research is that drinking tea can actually help prevent our cells from aging. I'm sure the emperor didn't have the SS but appreciated the anti-aging properties of tea, which prevents our telomeres from shortening, so our cells stay younger and slow down cellular aging. There's a polyphenol that everybody talks about, and I like to be specific. The polyphenol in tea that has been best studied is called EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate). Green tea has a lot of it because it's closest to what comes off the tea plant, and then everything from that, old teas come from that downstream in terms of how they're prepared. Green tea has as much as 16 times that EGCG compared to some of the more processed or handled teas.
One of my favorite things to talk about regarding EGCG is that I did research on this with the National Cancer Institute. If you take tea and put it into the same system that is growing blood vessels that would feed a cancer, cancers are harmful because they can't get a blood supply. If you put tea in that system, the blood vessels that would feed a tumor cannot grow. It takes it apart and prevents new ones from growing. People say, "Well, that's really amazing! Was it hot tea or cold tea?" Well, in the research lab, we used cold tea. Obviously, you wouldn't pour hot tea into a dish; you would cook everything.
This goes to show that the hot tea, which is where it started, had to be chilled in the refrigerator in a glass pitcher. We turned the hot tea into iced tea, and the next day when it was cold, we then tested it in the lab. This shows that this anti-angiogenic, cancer-starving property of tea, that EGCG, is present in both hot tea and is preserved through steeping, as well as in refrigeration and cooling. It still works when it's cold. So, I think that the good news is that hot tea and iced tea both work. They actually help our circulation and have been shown in the lab to help fight cancer growth. Other studies have shown that tea lowers blood pressure, helps your blood cholesterol, and boosts your immune system.
This has antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties. One of the things that I always say is, "Show me the evidence." Well, there have been clinical studies involving people showing that drinking two to three cups of green tea a day is associated with more than a 40% reduction in the risk of developing colon cancer. Sometimes I like a really strong cup of tea, and sometimes I like a lighter cup of tea. That's why having loose leaf tea is great. On the other hand, if you have tea in a bag or a sachet, you can also just pull the bag or sache out.
One little tip that I'll tell you from the health and polyphenol perspective is that if you're using tea that's in its own bag or sachet, you want to dunk that tea periodically while it's steeping because that action will actually allow the natural healthy chemicals, like EGCG, to come out into the water better. Let me share a little bit about the different types of diseases that tea has been shown through research to be protective against and how much you need to drink.
We talked about the fact that for colon cancer, research has shown that drinking two to three cups of green tea causes a substantial reduction of about 40%. For cardiovascular disease, which includes heart disease, stroke, and brain health, drinking four cups of tea a day—which I easily drink—has been shown to substantially lower the risk of heart disease. The same amount is also effective for lowering the risk of lupus, which is an autoimmune inflammatory disease, calming the immune system down to the right size.
Some of the things that really surprise me include lowering inflammation without compromising our immunity against bacteria and viruses. About four to five cups a day have been shown to be beneficial to protect against multiple sclerosis, which is an autoimmune disease, and rheumatoid arthritis as well. It's wonderful that you can be any age; you could be a teenager, or even young kids are starting to really come onto tea as well. I think that this is something you can drink your whole life, and that's the other wonderful thing about tea.