Overview

Just a few years ago, the only place to find green tea and green tea extract was on the shelves of your local health food stores.  Suddenly, overnight it seems, green tea is everywhere.  Since the medical establishment gave its official blessings to green tea in multiple studies, every major manufacturer of soft drinks and tea products has jumped on the bandwagon to market its own ‘health drink’ – green tea, fortified with sugar, honey, ginseng and other ingredients to make the flavor more palatable to our western tastes.

This is akin to the bastardizing of so many other healthy foods and supplements that we’ve seen in the last twenty-five years or so.  Mainstream manufacturers have never missed a chance to market a new product with claims of healthy properties – while counteracting those very properties with additions of sugar and other additives that force the body to work harder to extract the important nutrients that they’re selling.

In the case of green tea, which has been proven as one of the strongest antioxidants that we know, the benefits come from a group of nutrients known collectively as catechins. The most potent of these, ECGC, is believed to fight cancer, promote weight loss, boost the body’s immune system and lower cholesterol.  While these same catechins are present in black tea, they’re present to a far lesser extent because black tea is fermented.  The fermentation process apparently destroys much of the antioxidant and beneficial properties of green tea and green tea extract.

What Green Tea Extract Does:

Green tea extract is drawn from the leaves of the cammelia sinensis, a traditional Chinese tea.  It contains catechins, compounds that are known to be powerful antioxidants that help your body fight the cellular damage caused by the oxygenation of free radicals.  Green tea extract has also been shown to affect the absorption of cholesterol in the body, as well as help regulate the levels of sugar in your blood.  There are also studies that indicate that the catechins in green tea extract significantly reduce the incidence of several forms of cancer, including cancer of the esophagus, prostate, stomach and intestines, breast and lungs.

ECGC, the catechin antioxidant found in green tea extract is 25-100 times more potent than either vitamin C or E. Research trials conducted at the Burnham Institute of La Jolla, California showed that ECGC blocks DNA pathways of some malignant cells, stopping cancer from proliferating.  Other studies have shown the value of green tea extract, specifically the polyphenols, in protecting the immune system of patients undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatment.  Catechins found in green tea extract also protect from viral infections by bonding with the proteins in the viral cells and preventing them from attaching to cell walls.

Health Benefits of Green Tea Extract:

The University of Maryland Medical Center’s Complementary Medicine Program reports that green tea extract helps treat the following conditions and symptoms:

• Increases the effectiveness of other treatments by promoting better absorption of chemicals and nutrients

• Prevents Atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries)

• Reduces High cholesterol levels

• Prevents certain types of cancer, including bladder, breast, colorectal, esophageal, lung, pancreatic, prostate, skin and stomach cancers.

• Reduces inflammation in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)

• Protects the liver from damage

• Increases metabolism which may help dieters lose weight

• May help control diabetes by lowering blood sugar levels

Possible Side Effects of Green Tea Extract

There are no known harmful side effects of green tea extract, though the caffeine content in green tea may cause typical stimulant responses in the body. 

Summary

With the wealth of ongoing research all pointing to multiple benefits of green tea extract in fighting cancer, heart disease and other common disorders, many doctors are recommending the consumption of green tea as a preventive for gastric disorders and other inflammatory disorders.  For a number of reasons, we prefer the use of green tea extract in a compound health supplement that also supplies other needed nutrients.  Specifically, because the catechins in green tea extract increase the bioavailability of other nutrients, green tea extract can be a powerful boost to your immune system.  In addition, using a supplement containing green tea extract doesn’t subject your body to the stimulant effect of caffeine.