Green Tea

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Frost
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Green Tea

Post by Frost »

I recently started drinking green tea daily, like one glass a day, average 5 times a week. I heard that it causes water retention to slacken a lot, as well as providing cardio and mortality bonuses. Anyone know more about it?
i just really like how it makes me feel for the day; makes me feel calm and relaxed.
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RRM
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Post by RRM »

We recommend against drinking green tea.
The plants you make green tea from are not even plants normally used for consumption (vegetables), but 'special' plants with 'active ingredients'
They are leaves and plants with all kind of pharmaceutical properties (like diurhetic), particularly anti-cancer properties and so on, but you need to consider that 'natural medicins' are like 'normal medicins'; you shouldnt take them just 'for the sake of good health' as these ingredients cannot give you health. All they can do, is counteract specific bad (and also good) molecules / processes. Taking natural medicins is the same as taking synthetic medicins; you dont take them to 'be healthy' but to fight a specific disease. And that requires a proper diagnosis first, followed by the the specific 'remedy' that just targets what needs to be targetted specifically.
There is no such thing as 'health promoting' food / medicins.
There are nutrients, and substances that should be avoided. While some of the latter can target something other bad, that does not make them health promotors, at all.
esca
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Post by esca »

a friend of mine told be about antioxidants in tea. i searched "tea and acne" using a search engine and it came up with a bunch of websites about "green tea." Here is one of the more interesting ones i found
==> http://ezinearticles.com/?Green-Tea---T ... &id=486985

any thoughts on this? i don't know so much about the last part though... tea bagging your face and all... thats just too funny to take seriously
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RRM
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Post by RRM »

From the link wrote:"Green tea has been shown to be as effective as a 4% solution of benzoyl peroxide without doing the same damage"
In other words; you can use tea bags for external use, and then it may be as effective as the cream.
What does it mean?
Every acne patient knows that no cream eliminates your acne. All it can do, is mask the effects a bit. But it will never prevent new acne. Your acne keeps coming, and then the tea bags may have a soothening effect, as a plaster on a wound.
since acne is often caused by problem deeper than the skin, drinking green tea can help to really get to the root of the problem.
So, without telling us what the root cause of acne is, they speculate that ingesting the antioxidants from green tea might help to fight that root cause, without telling us how....
A bit dubious, at best.
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Mr. PC
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Post by Mr. PC »

So ideally if you're on a perfect diet, green tea isn't necessary, but might give you too much of something; like cause you to retain too little water, right?

But for someone who sometimes eats unhealthy, would drinking green tea be a good idea to help re-balance? Like if a much food has an oxidizing and water-retaining effect, I'd imagine green tea could help; even though it wouldn't be as healthy as just never eating the much food in the first place.
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RRM
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Post by RRM »

Mr. PC wrote:But for someone who sometimes eats unhealthy, would drinking green tea be a good idea to help re-balance? Like if a much food has an oxidizing and water-retaining effect, I'd imagine green tea could help; even though it wouldn't be as healthy as just never eating the much food in the first place.
In theory, yes.
However, the body is more complicated than that.
Its llike taking both uppers and downers (drugs) so that they balance eachother. In theory they do, but it may actually cause other 'side effects', as the body still has to deal with the effects of both; they dont neutralize eachother; just their 'potential outcomes'.
Also, as with many substances with an effect in our body, the effects of combining is often different from what you might expect; a + effect of A may become - in the presence of B.
The same goes for oxidants and antioxidants; very often antioxidants also have oxidative properties and vice versa.
To complicate matters even more, they are often specific; anti-oxidant regarding specific oxidants, but oxidants regarding other substances.
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Mr. PC
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Post by Mr. PC »

Sorry I'm bumping a few old posts today, I haven't been online for a while and just reading these now. Don't know if bumping is frowned upon here.

But what I gather here is that taking a food like Green Tea is only useful if I have a certain ailment that Green Tea is known to help with, but I shouldn't try to figure these interactions out for myself since they're so complex.

But what about a nutritionist/doctor who's studied the affects of 'natural medicines' or who knows from experience that a specific medicine will help with a specific ailment?
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Oscar
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Post by Oscar »

Bumping old posts is fine, if there's a reason (like a question, new info, etc).

We believe that many diseases, disorders, ailments, etc have their root cause in food. By following the diet strictly, you can see what happens to that specific problem. If you have established that the diet is not the culprit, then other measures can be taken. Natural remedies is one of those options.

Personally I wouldn't consider a natural drug as munch food, but I guess it depends on what you find acceptable or not. At least the protein content is low.
smith2287
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about green tea

Post by smith2287 »

Green tea originated in China for medicinal purposes, and its first recorded use was 4,000 years ago. By the third century, it became a daily drink and cultivation and processing began. Today, China has hundreds of different types of green teas. Other producers of green tea include India, Indonesia, Korea, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
Jodiat
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Post by Jodiat »

I use rooibos tea myself. I use it for its anti-oxidents because I have always felt I stress my body alot working out. Plus its as good as green in terms of anti-oxidents and has no caffiene.
I also read green tea is good a regulating sebum production and its also good for lowering testosterone > DHT. However it also seems to block the uptake of fats, including omega 3!
Aspalathin is a rare and powerful antioxident to help my hampered immune system...Tea is a 'big' thing in the UK and I love the taste of tea and hate every other tea except this one. The health properties are a nice extra really.
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Oscar
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Post by Oscar »

Our bodies produce and use both free radicals and antioxidants. Consuming random amounts of antioxidants is not going to help it. The best we can do is create an optimal environment for the body to do its work, and let it figure out how much of which is needed.
This is a review done in 2008 by the Cochrane Organization.

No evidence that antioxidant supplements prolong life

Many people take antioxidants in the belief that they will prolong their life expectancy. However, data from 67 randomised trials that involved just under a quarter of a million people failed to support this idea, a Cochrane Systematic Review has discovered.

“We could find no evidence to support taking antioxidant supplements to reduce the risk of dying earlier in healthy people or patients with various diseases,” says Goran Bjelakovic, visiting researcher, who performed the systematic review at the Copenhagen Trial Unit at the Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark.

The idea that antioxidants can extend life comes from human and animal laboratory research and has been boosted by some observational clinical studies. But other studies have indicated neutral or even harmful effects.

Cochrane reviews are based on peer reviewed published protocols that aim to identify randomised, published and unpublished, trials. Following Cochrane methodology, relevant data are extracted and pooled together from the identified trials, which are also assessed and subdivided into unbiased and biased in terms of methodology of their conductance, so that unbiased assessments of intervention effects can be conducted.

“The findings of our review show that if anything, people in trial groups given the antioxidants beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E showed increased rates of mortality. There was no indication that vitamin C and selenium may have positive or negative effects. So regarding these antioxidants we need more data from randomised trials,” says Bjelakovic. “The bottom line is that current evidence does not support the use of antioxidant supplements in the general healthy population or in patients with certain diseases.”

Bjelakovic G, Nikolova D, Gluud LL, Simonetti RG, Gluud C. Antioxidant supplements for prevention of mortality in healthy participants and patients with various diseases. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2008, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD007176. DOI:10.1002/14651858.CD007176.
Jodiat
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Post by Jodiat »

Ahh nice find.

My concern with this is the type of supplements used. Im sure your aware of the difference between a dextrose supplement compared to a lab made supplement.
The ammounts of a supplement isnt clear. I have read studies using 'natural' Vitamin E which leads to an increase in mortality when D-Alpha solo was used. Also vitamin C has similar findings when used as asorbic acid only. These findings show that taking any supplement, even natrual is a real problem. However when all the Tocopherols are used in vitamin E and all the co-factors found in a complete vitamin C are used (vitamin K and Bioflavonoides) these are far from deadly. Vitamin C/E (like aminos) is only as strong as its weakest link.
Ive read studies that show lycopene (which isnt destroyed by heat) in tomatoes has anti-oxident effects perticular to the skin which can help with the skins ability to reduce damage from sun burn. However the lab made lycopene did absolute nothing!

Tea is an age old tradition that dates back long before the agricultural revolution. I still belive some teas have health giving properties when used but not abused.
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Oscar
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Post by Oscar »

Btw, have you read http://www.waiworld.com/waidiet/nut-supplements.html ? Even though it mainly discusses vitamins and minerals, the message is the same.

I agree that many herbs have medicinal properties, and might help with certain conditions. I'd say starting with creating a natural nutritional environment for the body first, and then deciding to experiment with herbs and such if certain problems persist, is a more effective way than taking these as a preventive measure.

'Old' doesn't necessarily mean good, and besides, maybe people did need the medicinal properties because their nutrition wasn't that great. Btw, chewing coca leaves is a quite old tradition too. ;)
Jodiat
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Post by Jodiat »

Good read. I used to take lots of supplements but the only ones that ever helped was MSM, Zinc and chromium.

Thats also sage advice. Teas can do amazing things...when used and abused. Theres 3 teas I use and one is pepper mint which has helped with digestion and my bowels in the past. Rooibos is a tea I use if im asked if I want a drink of tea by anyone. The last one I use is Chianca Piedra and is known as a stone breaker which has helped my liver alot.

I agree 'old' dosnt mean much. However valid information is lost over time which I find rather sad.
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Post by johndela1 »

Jodiat wrote: The last one I use is Chianca Piedra and is known as a stone breaker which has helped my liver alot.
how have you measured this and how do you know it wasn't something else and was a coincidence?

Correlation is often confused with causation
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