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| ing and stimulatingnothing more. Yet there's another reason people the world over drink more tea than any other beverage: the lowly tea leaf has potent health-enhancing powers. The Chinese have known this for some four thousand years; finally, modern research is catching up. |
| F.Y.I. |
| Recent research supports the traditional use of tea to fight flu. Tea's antioxidants help strengthen the immune system, enabling it to fight flu and other viruses. |
| Tea is also high in cavity-fighting fluoride. Japanese researchers have also found that four compounds in teatannin, catechin, caffeine, and tocopherolhelp make tooth enamel resistant to decay. |
| Serious Medicine |
| Black and green teas are loaded with flavonoids called polyphenols. Polyphenols act as antioxidants, helping to prevent the free-radical cell damage that leads to cancer, high cholesterol, heart disease, and other serious afflictions. |
| Researchers studying thirty-nine different antioxidants in foods have found that the polyphenols found in tea are the most potent free-radical fighters of all. |
| Tea has been shown to reduce tumor formation and is linked to lower levels of skin, breast, lung, esophageal, pancreatic, colon, liver, small intestine, and stomach cancer. |
| In a study of eight hundred men, those who ate the most flavonoids, including polyphenols, had a 58 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease than those who ate the least. And the healthiest men were those who got more than half their flavonoids from about four cups of black tea a day. |
| Tips: |
| Steep tea for three minutes to get all the beneficial compounds. Steeping longer will produce more compounds, but it also makes them bitter. |
| Opt for tea bags rather than loose tea: tea in bags has more polyphenol. |
| Both green and black teas (regular and decaffeinated) contain health-promoting substances; so |
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