Tea stops tumors causing heart disease and stroke, according to Laboratory Studies.
And as it contains clout, it protects against dental cavities.
Also, hundreds of compounds in tea, called polyphenols, act as antioxidants.
Meaning, they help neutralize harmful oxygen molecules in the body known as free radicals, which have been linked to cancer, heart disease, and various less serious problems, such as wrinkles.
“In General polyphenols are very good antioxidants. But tea contains the best polyphenols, and tea has a lot of them,” according to Joe A. Vinson, PHD, professor of analytical chemistry at the University of Seranton in Pennsylvania.”They make up nearly 30% of tea’s dry weight.” This may help explain why tea is the most popular beverage in the world.

Protection of arteries
The results of blocked arteries, high blood pressure, heart attacks and stroke,, don’t happen over night.
Years of steadily increasing damage are proceeding, in which dangerous low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol oxidizes and gradually makes arteries stiff and narrow.
Tea can solve this problem. Polyphenols in tea are extremely effective in preventing cholesterol from oxidizing blood vessels. In fact, one of the polyphenols in tea, epigallocatechin (EGCG), was able to neutralize five times as much LDL cholesterol as vitamin C, the strongest of the antioxidant vitamins. Why are the polyphenols in tea so effective? The reason is because they can work in two ways.
They block the harmful effects of oxidized LDL cholesterol in the blood stream and at the artery walls, where LDL really produces atherosclerosis, says Dr. Vinson.

Rresearchers from a Dutch study, involving 880 men, found that those who ate the most flavonoids, a large phytochemical family, including polyphenol in tea, had a 58% lower risk of dying from heart disease than those who ate the least. After further analyzing the results, it was revealed that the healthiest men were those who were getting more than half their flavonoids from black tea, and the rest from onions and apples.
You don’t have to drink lots of tea to get the benefits. In the Dutch study the healthiest men drank about 4 cups of tea per day.
Just as the tea protect arteries leading from the heart, the same effect happens on arteries in or leading to the brain, says Dr. Vinson.
A new Japanese study found that people who drank at least 5 cups of green tea daily had a whopping 62% lower risk of having a stroke from clotting arteries. According to experts, antioxidants in green tea help sticky cells that clump together to form clots, called platelets, to slide safely past each other. When there are no clots, there can be no strokes.

Cancer protection
When you grill a hamburger, compounds called heterocyclic amines are formed on the surface of the food. The body transforms these chemicals into more dangerous forms, which can cause cancer, according to John Weisburger, MD, PhD,vice president for research and director of the Naylor Dana institute for Disease Prevention, in New York,
Other compounds found in tea, called polyphenols, prevents the formation of potential carcinogens, Dr. Weisburger says. In other words, they help stop cancer before it starts.

Skin cancer protection
Cancer researcher Hasan Mukhtar, PhD, of the department of dermatology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, has seen tea stopping cancer at each stage of its life cycle, arresting both its growth and spread. And where cancerous tumors have already formed, he has seen tea shrink them.
Dr. Mukhtar studied the effect of sunburn skin on laboratory animals and found that the animals given tea developed one-tenth as many tumors as those given water. Even when the tea-given animals developed tumors, they were often benign, not cancerous. What’s more, tea was equally effective whether given as a drink or applied to the skin. Some cosmetics companies have started adding green tea to skin products for its potential protective benefits.

Dental protection
Tea also help prevent toothache, since it contains many compounds, polyphenols as well as tannin, that act as antibiotics. In other words, tea removes the bacteria that promote tooth decay.
Tea also contains fluoride, which provide further dental protection. When researchers at Forsyth Dental Center in Boston tested a variety of foods for their antibacterial qualities, they found that tea was far and away the most protective.
Researchers at Kyushu University in Fukioka, Japan, have identified four components in tea – tannin, catechin, caffeine and tocopherol ( a vitamin E-like substance) – that help to increase the acid resistance of tooth enamel. This quartet of compounds was made even more effective with the addition of extra fluoride. The extra boost made tooth enamel 98% impervious to the action of acids on the teeth.

Different colors of tea
You can have Green tea, Black tea, Vanilla maple tea, Raspberry tea, Black currant tea, Apricot tea. Which tea has the most healing polythenols? It makes no difference, as long as it is real tea and not herbal tea, which doesn’t contain leaves from the Camellia sinensis , the tea plant. There is not much difference among them. They all contain leaves from the same plant.
However, they are not identical. The lightest leaves, green and white, are minimally-processed and, in general, retain more disease-protective polyphenols and other antioxidants. But darker teas contain healthy theaflavins, which form when their polyphenols ferment and turn orange-red.

Here follows an overview of the various “real” teas:
Black – The color refers to the leaves, the beverage is deep amber. Black tea varieties include Darjeeling and Earl Grey; flavors range from spicy to flowery. Black tea may lower the risk of heart disease and colon cancer; it can also inhibit bacteria that cause cavities and bad breath.

Green – If you find the flavor to “grassy”, try jewel green matcha or Japanese sencha. Green tea has been shown in numerous studies to help prevent many kinds of cancer, lower cholesterol and boost immunity.

Oolong.- Midway between green and black tea in color, flavor, and antioxidant action, oolong has a fresh floral or fruity aroma. When you drink three cups a day, it may help relieve itchy skin rashes.

Pu-ehr. (poo-air) -This dark red tea has an earthy flavor reminiscent of coffee and tobacco.
It’s considered a delicacy in China ( you can purchase it on line), where it’s processing is a highly guarded secret. The most oxidized of teas, pu-ehr is said to mellow and improve with age, like wine. It may help reduce cholesterol.

White.– Rare and somewhat expensive, the least processed tea has an extremely subtle flavor. But it does contain more antioxidants than other teas. Test-tube studies show that it can block DNA mutations (which trigger tumor formation). A study on rats discovered it prevented precancerous colon tumors.

How to get the most Steep for three minutes
It takes three minutes for it to release the health-promoting compounds. That’s also the time researchers use in their studies on tea. Longer steeping causes the tea to go bitter.
Use tea bags.
The pulverized content of tea bags release more polythenols than the larger loose leaves.
That’s because the tiny particles in the bag yield more surface area for polyphenols to dissolve into hot water.

Choose your flavors
Although green tea has been more thoroughly researched than the black variety, both kinds show equally salutary effects, says DR. Vinson. If you prefer decaffeinated tea, that’s okay. The removal of caffeine has little effect on tea’s polyphenol content. The same holds for bottled teas, iced tea, and tea made from mixes. In fact, some soft drinks and juice companies have been so impressed with the benefits of tea that they have begun fortifying their beverages with green tea. Check out your health food store for new products.
Don’t use milk – at least for now. According to an Italian study, adding milk to tea, as the British do, blocked tea antioxidant benefits. “There is some evidence that milk protein binds to some of the tea compounds and blocks their absorption. But those compounds could get unbound in the stomach. So we’re not so sure milk is bad,” says Dr. Vinson.

Keep it fresh
When making your own iced tea, drink it within a few days. “And make sure you cover it to keep it fresh when you refrigerate it” he advises. When you keep iced tea for longer than
a week, the concentration of compounds falls off. Many bottled and powdered iced teas remain spectacular antioxidant levels. In one prevention magazine analyses of antioxidants in various commercial iced teas, even the lowest-scoring convenience iced teas contained at least as many antioxidants as fruits and vegetables, such as strawberries and spinach! But highest honors went to home-made iced tea- cold-brewed refrigerator and classic hot-brewed tea that was than chilled came in even with each other for antioxidant levels. (One tip: shake cold-brewed tea before removing tea bags. It seems to knock more antioxidants into the liquid.)

Drink tea after eating meat
Because polyphenol compounds in tea help to block the formation of cancer-causing chemicals, it’s a good idea to have a cup of tea after eating fried or charred meat.

Doctor’s top tip
When you are a sneezer, drink more green tea, It may be useful against a wide range of sneeze- starting allergens, including pollen, pet dander and dust. Go for two to three mugs a day.

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