Cancer, Heart Disease & Tea?

Just reading an interesting book "User's guide to antioxidant supplements" and find the following information about tea interesting, so I share it here with friends:

Common balck & green tea varieties are 25%~30% flavonoids, and these flavonoids have demontrated heart protective effects. A forty year study of Japanese men found that those who drank more green tea had significantly lower cholosterol and triglycerides compared with men who drank less green tea. Tea flavonoids also show huge promise as cancer preventives.

In a study from Rutger university, researchers found that drinking black or green tea protects against skin cancer caused by ultraliolet (UV) light and hazardous chemicals. In mice that were given skin cancers through UV or chemical exposure, those that drank black tea had 93% less tumors than those taht drank water. Those that drank green tea had 88% fewer tumors than the water drinkers. Decaffeinated tea had slightly less antitumor power.

Here are some of the ways in which tea flavonoids support better health:

• Green tea flavonoids inhibit cancinogen activation--the transformation of relatively harmless substances into carcinogens once they are in the body.
• Tea flavonoids stimulate the action of detoxifying enzymes in the livern including the p450 detoxification system--an action that helps move carcinogens out of the body becore they have a chance to alter DNA activity.
• In cancerous cells, the tumor suppressor gene is generally shut off. Green and black tea supplements have been found to turn this gene back on.
• Tea polyphenols are natural inhibitors of angiogenesis, the process whereby tumors establish their own circulatory systems.
• Tea also helps to flush excess heavy metals such as mercury, lead, and iron out of body, which in turn reduces free-radical stress.