Rant On The Plant

What if there was a medicine that cured cancer, reversed aging and protected you from the common cold & flu? Would you be curious?

What if i told you it had no side effects? Would you be interested?

What if I told you it was an inexpensive, over-the-counter caffeinated (or not) drink that came in many flavors? Would you consider taking it?

Well, believe it or not, tea is that medicine. Drink five cups a day and you will reap all the benefits above. I drink three 16oz., two teabag, cups. You can even use it on your skin (there are creams out now). Oh, it comes in pill form too.

If you are one of the people that say, "I just don't like tea", listen up. There are hundreds of ways to 'take your tea'. I drink mine with milk (both black and green). You can mix it with sweetener, juice, or any other beverage. You can drink it hot or cold. You can cook with it and even take it in pill form!

Historically, it's been said that green tea is much healthier than black. However, scientists are finding out that black tea is just as good and in some ways better. Dang! So, the billions of people drinking it aren't so awfully misguided after all?

I am currently reading the book, 'Green Tea Health Benefits and Applications '.

It's a $150 book, but you might be able to find an electronic copy if you're resourceful enough.

You know the term, 'My poop doesn't stink'? One of the most startling things I've learned so far is that drinking green or black tea (get ready...) is that it reduces the odor of of bowel movements and gas by 50% by reducing the ammonia and sulfates through reducing bad bacteria in your gut.

Here's one of the Amazon reviews (by Paul T. Wegener):
Dr. Yukihiko Hara was the first to purify green tea catechins on a larger scale. As Director of the Food Research Laboratories at Mitsui Norin Co, he and his colleagues worked in their extra time to purify these compounds and make them available in the late 1980's. The methods they developed are used today to purify the green tea extracts available from pills to shampoo. This book reports on their scientific efforts exploring the activity of the catechins and reviews the work of others in the field. It is clearly written in layman's language with many illustrations.
Key areas covered include where catechins come from and how they are purified, anti-oxidant and radical scavenging in food products and animals. Their tests, mostly in animals of the anti-bacterial action, the anti-viral action and the anti-cancer action, are reported in the next few chapters. Each chapter describes the experiments in sufficient detail so you can evaluate the meaning of the effect. There are further chapters on health effects in humans, including fat reduction and improved bowel function, help for diabetes and also hypertension, backed up by straightforward experiments. He ends with a general discussion of trends in the field.
Much of this work was done by Dr. Hara's group and close collaborators, so the original papers were published in Japanese; for many experiments this book is the only way to read about them in English. Green Tea Catechins are now studied around the world, but the quantities needed originated in this lab and he has supplied the catechins other scientists have used for most of that work. Mitsui Norin purified the catechins sold at Sigma Chemicals until this last year.
Currently Dr. Hara's group has a collaborative research effort with the US National Cancer Institute to test the anti-cancer effects of green tea catechins in people with precancerous lesions. The book provides the background one needs to appreciate this effort and gives the history of the science leading up to the NCI trials in a convenient way.
Dr. John Weisburger, the distinguished research scientist from the American Health Foundation, has written a helpful foreword.

Tea is easy. Tea is great for you. Tea is cheap. So, do yourself a favor and spend 30 days trying tea in a myriad of ways to find your preferred method of taking this miracle medicine.

Stay tuned for the next episode of 'Rant on The Plant'