You can now add tea to your list of healing foods. In fact, some experts claim that we should add tea to the list of disease-fighting fruits and vegetables that we should eat daily. Some intriguing information was presented at the Society of Critical Care Medicine in January 2002 on how green tea may help decrease inflammation.

Green tea contains a type of polyphenol known as epigallocatechin-3 gallate, or EGCG, that inhibits the expression of the interieukin-8 gene. This is a key gene involved in the arthritis-inflammatory response. In these findings, researchers theorized that “more may be better” when it comes to green tea reducing the inflammatory response as EGCG short circuits the process that leads to inflammation. (If you like black tea, drink up! Black tea is made from the same leaves as green and contains theaflavins, strong phytochemicals that help to protect the body. Though processed differently, black tea may be equally effective and is tolerable for many people.)

Photo by Stephen Ausmus.

Sipping tea instead of other drinks may help to ward off painful fractures. In another revealing study published in May 2002 in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, scientists found that men and women who drank tea for years had denser bones at three different skeletal sites, regardless of the type or amount of tea they consumed each day. Researchers concluded that drinking tea regularly for at least ten years was estimated to boost bone mineral density by up to 5 percent. This bone-boosting benefit may be attributed to special compounds in tea such as fluoride, phytoestrogens, and flavonoids, a group of antioxidants all working together. (Herbal teas are not “real” tea.)

Some key prevention benefits of tea includes the following:

• Antioxidant
• Antibacterial
• Antivirus
• Antiaging properties
• Anti-inflammatory