Benefits of green tea
There are many kinds of tea. Teas can be roughly divided primarily on the genuine tea, fruit tea and herbal teas. Teas that come from the tea bush (Camellia sinensis) are so called “genuine teas”. Tea tree is an evergreen plant that grows mainly in tropical and subtropical climates.
The principal countries producing green tea are China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Indonesia, Nepal, Australia, Argentina, Russia and Kenya. However the homeland of green tea is China, where they drank tea as a medicinal product already in 6th century.
Types of genuine tea are distinguished according to the length of the fermentation process of tea leaves and depending on the treatment process. Therefore we distinguish four main types of tea:
- Black Tea: This tea is the most common in Western countries. The leaves of black tea were significantly oxidized.
- Green Tea: The process of oxidation (fermentation) is interrupted by heat.
- Oolong tea: the oxidation process takes longer than the required time, but less than black tea.
- White Tea: Tea composed of young, Un-oxidised leaves (buds). In the West is white tea less known.
One of major component of tea is catechins, type of antioxidants in fresh leaves as much as 30% by weight. The highest percentage of catechins is in green and white tea, black tea due to the longer drying (oxidation) contains less catechins.
An important ingredient in tea is caffeine, a cup of tea contains about 30-90 mg, depending on the type of tea, producer, and mixtures. In the tea are also theobromine and theophylline, which have a similar effect as caffeine invigorating. Theobromine acts primarily stimulant, is effective longer than caffeine and improves mood. Other components of tea are fluoride to prevent tooth decay and vitamins.
Benefits of Green Tea
Benefits of green tea are known for its healing effects as is the main source of antioxidants and supports cardiovascular health. Tea has even higher antioxidant capacity than vitamin C. The highest level of antioxidants contains green tea. Property of the antioxidants is to neutralize free radicals in the body and are beneficial for our cardiovascular system. Of course, tea has many other medicinal properties.
Health Benefits of green tea are:
- Green tea helps reduce the risk of cancer by helping to protect cells from damage, which are considered to be related to cancer.
- Green tea prevents heart disease by reducing blood cholesterol and also helps prevent heart attacks.
- As mentioned above, green tea contains antioxidants, which fight against free radicals and also helps in maintaining the youthful appearance and promotes vitality.
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Green tea helps to lose weight, because melts fat and promotes the natural functioning of metabolism.
- Green tea protects the skin from the harmful effects of free radicals that cause skin aging and help prevent skin cancer. More about green tea skin benefits.
- A good feature of green tea is also that it helps to prevent and reduce the risk of rheumatoid arthritis, as cartilage in this way protects by blocking an enzyme that destroys it.
- It also helps reduce cholesterol levels and improves the ratio of good and bad cholesterol by lowering levels of bad.
- Green tea prevents obesity by stopping the movement of glucose in fat cells.
- Improves lipid and glucose in metabolism and prevents increased blood sugar levels.
- Green tea also helps in strengthening and preserving the memory and slow down the process of acetylcholine in the brain that causes Alzheimer’s disease.
- Drinking green tea also greatly reduces the chance of developing Parkinson’s disease because it helps prevent cell damage in the brain.
- Green tea helps in liver transplantation because research has shown that destroys harmful free radicals in fatty liver.
- It also helps maintain normal blood pressure and thus reduces the risk of raising it.
- Green tea destroys bacteria that can cause food poisoning and kills the toxins produced by those bacteria.
- Green tea contains polyphenols and flavenoide to assist in strengthening the immune system in addition to vitamin C in green tea helps in the rapid treatment of diseases.
- Reduce the possibility of developing asthma as relax the muscles which support the bronchial route and helps with problems with sore ears.
- It also increases the effectiveness of the treatment of herpes and destroys bacteria and viruses that cause many dental diseases. It also inhibits the growth of bacteria that cause bad breath.
- Amino acids located in green tea help prevent stress, as well as tea relieves allergies and prevents them.
- What is interesting is the fact that scientists in Japan found that green tea prevents the HIV virus to attack healthy immune cells. In this way, green tea may help slow the spread of this deadly virus.