Health Benefits: Whats true and whats not?
Posted: Apr 2nd, '11, 17:33
Ok, so based on a post from an earlier topic. I was doing some heavy research on what exactly are the health benefits of tea.
In the end I felt I had not acquired one solid answer. Almost every lead, every scrap of information I found resulted in one of these two answers.
1. In order to achieve these benefits you would need to drink a very large portion of tea.
2. These benefits are only hypothetical and will require more experimentation, because we have had so much contridicting information, or we don't have the technology to answer these questions.
So what exactly are the health benefits of tea?
Let me compose just a couple of the most pesky points of research I found.
L-Theanine-
A. Fantastic thing! Guaranteed to moderate the intake of caffeine. Gives you a type of "quiet alertness." In tea you can get up to 50mg per cup of high quality green tea.
B. Fantastic thing! Unfortunately most tea has only about 10mg per cup, and in order to take effect the body needs 50-200 mg.
Antioxidents-
A. They help by bonding to free radicals which reduces the chance of cancer.
B. We believe we have found a possiable way to reduce the risk of cancer. However since humans know little about cancer and antioxidents, we don't know if antioxidents are even a way to fix it, or even what they really do. Plus you would have to drink many cups of tea a day for the effects to even occure.
Now there are tons of little contridicting pieces of junk all over the place. My question to you is what is true and what is not.
In the end I felt I had not acquired one solid answer. Almost every lead, every scrap of information I found resulted in one of these two answers.
1. In order to achieve these benefits you would need to drink a very large portion of tea.
2. These benefits are only hypothetical and will require more experimentation, because we have had so much contridicting information, or we don't have the technology to answer these questions.
So what exactly are the health benefits of tea?
Let me compose just a couple of the most pesky points of research I found.
L-Theanine-
A. Fantastic thing! Guaranteed to moderate the intake of caffeine. Gives you a type of "quiet alertness." In tea you can get up to 50mg per cup of high quality green tea.
B. Fantastic thing! Unfortunately most tea has only about 10mg per cup, and in order to take effect the body needs 50-200 mg.
Antioxidents-
A. They help by bonding to free radicals which reduces the chance of cancer.
B. We believe we have found a possiable way to reduce the risk of cancer. However since humans know little about cancer and antioxidents, we don't know if antioxidents are even a way to fix it, or even what they really do. Plus you would have to drink many cups of tea a day for the effects to even occure.
Now there are tons of little contridicting pieces of junk all over the place. My question to you is what is true and what is not.