Relax with a Cup of This to Keep Your Lungs Young
It's warm, it's fresh tasting, and it's great with a little lemon and honey. And your lungs love it. It's green tea.
A review of 22 studies on tea confirms the lung benefits. People who drank the most green tea -- compared with drinkers of black tea or people who consumed little or no green tea -- had a 22 percent lower risk for lung cancer.
Multiple Cancer Crushers
Green tea may help protect lungs better than black tea does because green tea has more cancer-fighting antioxidants called catechins. And green tea catechins appear to thwart cancer in myriad ways. Lab studies show that a special kind of green tea catechin called epigallocatechin gallate may slow the growth of human cancer cells and may even trigger their death. Other green tea catechins are great at neutralizing cell-damaging free radicals that open the door to the cancer process. (Take these other small but powerful steps to protect your lungs from cancer, courtesy of the YOU Docs.)
Start a New Drinking Habit
The researchers suspect that the longer one has been drinking green tea, the more protection it gives. But further study is needed to confirm this. Regardless, why not start racking up a few years of green tea devotion right now? Here are three more good reasons to start a long relationship with green tea:
Prefer black tea? That's okay. Check out what black tea can do for your blood sugar.
Originally published on 10/15/2010
