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Green Tea May Do Wonders for the
Brain
Drinking at Least 2 Cups Daily Could Help Keep Minds Sharp,
Study Shows
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By
Miranda Hitti
WebMD Medical News
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Elders who drink green tea regularly may have sharper
minds than those who don't drink green tea.
The finding comes from
a Japanese study published in
The American Journal of
Clinical Nutrition.
The study included about 1,000 Japanese people aged 70
and older. Participants took tests of mental status
including memory, orientation, ability to follow
commands, and attention. They also told the researchers
how often they drank beverages including green tea.
Those who reported drinking the most green tea were
least likely to show cognitive impairment, based on
their test scores, write Shinichi Kuriyama, MD, PhD, and
colleagues.
Kuriyama works in the department of public health and
forensic medicine at Tohoku University's medical school
in Sendai, Japan.
How Much Green Tea Does It Take?
Drinking at least two daily cups of green tea was tied
to the lowest risk of cognitive impairment in Kuriyama's
study.
 Compared
with people who drank a cup of green tea up to three
times weekly, those who drank two or more daily cups of
green tea were 54% less likely to have test scores in
the range of cognitive impairment.
Drinking green tea a little less often wasn't bad.
People who drank a cup of green tea four to six times
per week were 38% less likely to show cognitive
impairment than those drinking green tea less than three
times weekly.
Coffee, black tea, and oolong tea didn't show the same
results. Green tea is a popular drink in Japan. More
than seven in 10 participants reported drinking at least
two cups of green tea daily.
Reading the Tea Leaves
The study doesn't prove that green tea deserves the
credit for the elders' sharp minds.
The researchers didn't ask anyone to change their tea
consumption for the study's sake. Instead, they checked
test scores and tea habits.
Data was only gathered once. So it's not clear if
participants' tea habits had lasted a lifetime or if
their test scores changed over time.
Kuriyama's team considered factors linked to cognitive
impairment, including diabetes, smoking, and advanced
age. They also adjusted for potentially helpful habits,
such as physical activity, social ties, consumption of
fish and vegetables, and self-reported overall health.
Even after considering all those factors, high
consumption of green tea was still associated with a
lower risk of cognitive impairment, the study shows.
Next Steps
"To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine
the association between consumption of green tea and
cognitive function in humans," Kuriyama's team writes.
They note that natural compounds in green tea --
especially a chemical called EGCG
(epigallocatechin-3-gallate) -- have shown promise in
experiments on brain diseases in animals.
However, something else about green tea might help the
brain, the researchers write.
For instance, people in Japan often socialize over green
tea. Socializing could be good for the brain, note
Kuriyama and colleagues.
They add that healthy people might be more likely to
drink green tea. If so, those people would have a
built-in brain advantage because of their general good
health.
SOURCE: Kuriyama,
S. The American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
Feb. 1, 2006; vol 83: pp 355-361.
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© 2006, WebMD Inc. All rights reserved. |
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