Showing posts with label polyphenol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label polyphenol. Show all posts

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Green Tea As a Natural Remedy For Acne

This is, in part, because they are less expensive, but they are also on hand and easily obtained. People have stopped looking at the expensive medications and creams to cure various conditions, and have started looking at remedies found closer to home. Natural remedies have become very popular in recent years.
One such remedy believed to aid in the healing of acne is green tea. If it's worked for many years, why wouldn't it work now? Acne is a common condition in teens and adults alike, and is no exception to the theory that a home remedy can sometimes be better.
There are only two herbal treatments that are known to be effective in treating acne and green tea is one of them. The answer seems to be 'Yes'. But does it provide an effective herbal alternative to modern medication?

Green tea is used by the Chinese as a traditional medicine to treat many ailments including acne and to improve general well-being.
Camellia Sinensis, or as we know it, green tea extract, contains a high content of Polyphenol, along with other important antioxidants. This helps to retain the active substances the leaves contain. While many teas are fermented, green tea instead, is steamed soon after being picked so as to prevent the oxidation of its leaves.
Since acne is often caused by hormones, which produce excess oil and clog pores, thereby causing blemishes, green tea could be a good remedy for this problem. It acts as an anti-bacterial substance, decreasing hormonal activity. Green tea can serve many purposes, and it is recommended for a number of reasons.
Green tea also has very few potential side effects, especially when compared to other acne products and medications. The antioxidents contained in green tea have been shown as very beneficial to acne prevention because they help the body fight against free radicals that cause cell and tissue damage.
When compared with other commonly used acne treatments, it ranked high, because of its natural anti-bacterial properties. Because of its advantages, green tea is also used in various creams and other topical products used to treat acne.
It also helps your body rid itself of toxins, which helps prevent acne. Green Tea and honeysuckle is often called "Pimple Tea" in China. It can be purchased as a cream.

Other products containing green tea extract are also sold and developed, and are available as herbal remedies.
It comes in the form of the cream mentioned above. It can be purchased in most stores that carry various herbal and other natural remedies, and can also be bought through many on-line sources. It is also easily available.
No matter how you choose to use it, it can serve many purposes, and may be a welcome alternative to harsh products or unwanted medications. Drinking green tea will help cleanse your body from the inside out, while applying the topical cream, which goes directly onto the skin, will help cure and prevent acne at the source.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

The Benefits of Green Tea for Cancer and Leukemia

Green tea has long had many health benefits associated with it and its curative properties have been used in Chinese medicine for thousands of years.
EGCG is considered to be the most active component in green tea and is the best researched of all the green tea polyphenols. Tea polyphenols are classified as catechins and green tea contains six primary catechin compounds: catechin, gallaogatechin, epicatechin, epigallocatechin, epicatechin gallate, and epigallocatechin gallate (also known as EGCG). The more the leaves are fermented, the lower the polyphenol content and the higher the caffeine content. Green tea is made from unfermented leaves and is reputed to contain the highest concentration of polyphenols, chemicals that act as powerful antioxidants.

Green tea, black tea and oolong tea are all made with the leaves of the Camellia sinensis bush.
Several studies have suggested that green tea and green tea extract have cancer-fighting abilities, possibly because the tea's concentration of antioxidants such as EGCG help minimize the cell damage that can lead to cancer.
EGCG (the key antioxidant in green tea) has been shown to kill cancer cells taken from leukaemia patients and put in a test tube. A recent study conducted at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota has demonstrated the benefits of green tea in adult sufferers of leukemia.
The fourth patient who did not show an improvement in her cancer overall, still exhibited an increase in her white blood cell count. In the months after they started drinking green tea or taking green tea extracts, three of them showed measurable improvements in their condition. All four patients had CLL (chronic lymphocytic leukemia). All four patients had started using green tea on their own last year, after hearing media reports about its health benefits.

All four patients had started using green tea on their own last year, after hearing media reports about its health benefits. Doctors at the clinic reported that four patients had started using green tea on their own last year, after hearing media reports about its health benefits.
However, over the next year the patient's lymph nodes steadily reduced in size. Swelling of the lymph nodes is one of the characteristic symptoms of CLL. In one case, a patient had been showing progressive swelling in her lymph nodes before she starting taking green tea capsules twice a day.
However, the benefit of EGCG over methotrexate is that it has far fewer side effects. Both work by blocking the enzyme dihydrofolate reductase, which is essential to the growth of tumour cells. Researchers have found that EGCG, the anti-cancer compound in green tea, works in a similar way to the anti-cancer drug methotrexate. Other research has come up with an explanation for why regular green tea drinkers have a low incidence of gastric and oesophageal cancers.
Women seeking to conceive or who are already pregnant are advised to consult their medical practitioner about the risks associated with drinking green tea. However, in a study conducted at Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program of Northern California in Oakland, researchers found that women who drank more than one half cup of caffeinated green tea every day doubled their odds of conceiving. This side effect could explain the increased risk of birth defects such as spina bifida.

The same study also showed that blocking the dihydrofolate reductase enzyme lowers folic acid levels.

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