VITAL ROLE OF ‘DIGESTION’ IN RELEASING THE MEDICINAL BENEFITS OF GREEN TEA
New research from Newcastle University, published in the journal Phytomedicine, has shown the vital role that digestion plays in breaking down the polyphenols in green tea into key compounds that help protect the brain cells – as these polyphenols help neutralise toxic compounds like hydrogen peroxide and amyloid beta, found especially in the brains of Alzheimers’ patients.
Lead researcher Dr Ed Okello explained, ” There are certain chemicals we know to be beneficial and we can identify foods which are rich in them but what happens during the digestion process is crucial to whether these foods are actually doing us any good. What was really exciting about this study was that we found when green tea is digested by enzymes in the gut, the resulting chemicals are actually more effective against key triggers of Alzheimer’s development than the undigested form of the tea. In addition to this, we also found the digested compounds had anticancer properties, significantly slowing down the growth of the tumour cells which we were using in our experiments.”
“Green tea has been used in Traditional Chinese medicine for centuries and what we have here provides the scientific evidence why it may be effective against some of the key diseases we face today.”
