Japan centenarians at record high

The number of people in Japan who have reached or passed the 100-year-old mark has reached record levels — and shows no signs of slowing down.


Hmm, you don't all that green tea they drink has anything to do with it, do you?



Matsu Yamazaki, 103, still works in her family's grocery shop in Tokyo.


—Mellow Monk

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It's official: diets don't work (but green tea does!)

Research done at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and reported in the journal American Psychologist delivers the devastating (to the diet industry) news: dieting does not work.

"You can initially lose 5 to 10 percent of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back," said Traci Mann, UCLA associate professor of psychology and lead author of the study. "We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more. Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants, while complete weight regain was found in the majority. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people."

Instead, what does work is exercise and eating healthy and in moderation — and green tea can play a pivotal role in your eat-healthy-to-lose-weight strategy.



Authors of the UCLA study, psychologists Traci Mann (right) and Janet Tomiyama.


—Mellow Monk

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Benefits of tea: freshly brewed beats bottled

Salada Tea has announced a campaign that Mellow Monk can definitely get behind: to promote the health and environmental benefits of freshly brewed tea over bottled tea:

Freshly brewed green tea has up to 95 percent higher levels of the antioxidant EGCG than bottled tea (2006 U.S. Department of Agriculture database of flavonoid content in foods). Antioxidants in green tea are sensitive to heat, oxygen, sweeteners and other additives and can easily be destroyed during processing, transportation and storage of bottled tea. Studies have shown that antioxidants help with weight loss, cholesterol, cardiovascular diseases and stress.

And speaking of EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate), the many benefits of this antioxidant — which is found only in green tea — may include the ability to prevent Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.





—Mellow Monk

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Reading the mystery behind tea leaves

From abc13.com:

If you're poised to bring a beverage to your lips and it's not water, chances are, it is tea. Second to water, tea is the most consumed beverage around the world according to the FDA. Steaming hot or iced, in winter or summer, tea is soothing, refreshing, fragrant and even healing.

—Mellow Monk

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Another way green tea fights obesity

Researchers at Australia's Monash University have found that carbohydrates and and sugars promote weight gain not only by being converted into fat but also by damaging the brain cells that suppress appetite.


This happens because carbs and sugars create large amounts of free radicals, which attack neurons in the brain known as POMC neurons. When we eat and our stomach fills up, these neurons — when functioning normally — "turn off" our hunger by telling the brain, "OK, you can stop eating now. We're full!"


(Nature has an illustration describing how POMC cells regulate appetite.)


But when these neurons degenerate prematurely over time due to the free radicals in carb- and sugar-rich diets, these cells lose their ability to suppress appetite. A person with weakened POMC neurons will still feel hungry even after eating his fill and consequently pack on the pounds.


But green tea, remember, is positively rich in antioxidants, which zap free radicals — including (presumably) the ones that attack POMC cells. So, by keeping our POMC cells healthy, green tea can fend of obesity.



There will be a test on this tomorrow.


—Mellow Monk

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Self-massage while faffling

The Britishism to faffle roughly corresponds to the Yiddishism to putz around. Both terms express a concept that we should all learn to embrace in this über-hectic world of ours:

Faffing is good. It is an important part of life. Faffing is when we disconnect from the matrix and idle for a while, like a car. Our body and spirit know deep down that human beings were not made for constant toil so subconsciously creates space through the mechanism of faffing.

A good non-activity to engage in while faffling is self-massage. For instance:

1. Every morning and evening, hammer out the kinks. Using your fists, gently thump the outside of your body, starting with your legs and arms, working from top to bottom. Then move inward to your torso and thump from bottom to top. "Pummeling your muscles and bones will help strengthen the body, stimulate blood circulation, and relax nerve endings," says Walsemann. When done in the morning, this self-massage technique will waken and prepare your body -- and mind -- for the day ahead. When done before bed, it calms down the mind and beats out the stress and tension of the day. One warning: If you're taking any kind of blood thinner, such as Coumadin (warfarin), avoid this one; you could wind up with bruising.

By the way, Grasshopper, brewing and drinking green tea is another great excuse for a faffling session. And green tea has the added benefit of also being good for your body, too.



"Ah, I can smell the green tea brewing."


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea shown effective against breast cancer

In a study done at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, the green tea catechin epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) significantly inhibited breast tumor growth in female mice.



The Medical Center at Ole Miss, where the research was conducted.


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea is on "Brain Food" menu

Some foods are so beneficial to your brain that they're almost like pharmaceuticals. Fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids are one category of such foods. Foods rich in antioxidants — especially polyphenols — are another:

One group [of antioxidants] that has been evaluated, the polyphenols, has been shown in rodents to reduce oxidative damage and to boost the ability to learn and retain memories. In particular, these chemicals affect changes in response to different types of stimulation in the hippocampus (a part of the brain that is crucial to the formation of long-term memories, and which is the region most affected by Alzheimer’s disease).

And guess which green beverage is rich in polyphenols? That's right — green tea.



She's improving her mind in two ways: reading and drinking green tea.



Green tea appears prominently under "Beverages".


—Mellow Monk

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How our bodies age (and how to prevent it)

In graphical format, how the body ages:

Aging is the natural wear and tear of the body's component parts. It's inevitable, and endlessly intriguing. While many age-related changes cannot be prevented, a lifestyle that includes exercise and a well-balanced diet will slow or minimize many problems related to aging.

Read about green tea and aging here.



Click on the image to see the huge full-sized version.


—Mellow Monk

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How green tea helps the heart

Yet another reason to "go green":

A new study shows that [green tea], which is more popular in Eastern cultures, can protect heart arteries by keeping them flexible and relaxed, and therefore better able to withstand the ups and downs of constant changes in blood pressure.

"Would you like some tea?"


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea protects against heart disease: study

Just a few cups of green tea a day can prevent heart disease, according to a study published in the European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation.

This looks like a second steeping — see how the leaves in the teapot have opened up?

—Mellow Monk

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33 benefits of tea

The article "33 Health Benefits of Drinking Tea" not only provides a comprehensive list of the health benefits of tea but also divides those benefits into categories.

Even so, this list is by no means complete — scientists are discovering new benefits on an almost daily basis. And of course, we all know that of the various teas, green tea is the healthiest.

—Mellow Monk

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Green tea prevents memory loss from sleep apnea

To the long list of ailments that science is finding to be preventable or treatable with green tea, add memory loss due to sleep apnea.



The first step in preventing memory loss with green tea, Grasshopper, is remembering to drink it.


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea, superfood

Green tea makes yet another list of superfoods.





—Mellow Monk

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Study: green tea can prevent colon cancer

The latest issue of the journal Gastroenterology contains an article about how green tea can prevent colorectal cancer.


The chemistry involved is complex, but it basically breaks down like this:


The green tea antioxidant epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) interferes with the production of basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF). Normal cells use bFGF to form blood vessels, but cancer cells produce it in excessive amounts to reproduce and spread (metastasize) to other parts of the body.


So, by impeding the overproduction of bFGF by cancer cells, EGCG stops cancer in its tracks.


In other words, green tea may be the beverage of mellowness, but it gets tough when it comes to cancer.



Cover of the issue of Gastroenterology containing the linked-to article about green tea and colorectal cancer.


—Mellow Monk

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America's unhealthiest drinks

Numbered lists seem to be popular again—by "again" I mean, do you remember the Book of Lists?


For instance, Men's Health magazine has a list of the 20 unhealthiest drinks in America.


Hmm . . . if those are the unhealthiest drinks, then I wonder was the healthiest drink could be.



A cool, thirst-quenching version—perfect for summertime—of the world's healthiest drink.


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea as the optimum source of caffeine

The article "Caffeine: A User's Guide to Getting Optimally Wired" comes to the following conclusion:

[To find an optimum source of caffeine] why not enjoy a cup of green tea [. . .], as the Chinese have for nearly 5000 years? It's hard to come by a better longitudinal study than that.

On the other hand, if you're worried about getting too much caffeine, then green tea is still a wise choice. Read more about green tea and caffeine, including how to decaffeinate your green tea yourself, here.



Click on the "hybrid brain" image to go to the home page of the article's author.


—Mellow Monk

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Slow your roll with green tea

To mellow out, you can drink Drank, the "anti-energy drink" that "slows your roll" by inducing sleepiness with melatonin, valerian root, and rose hips.


Or you can drink green tea, whose theanine mellows without inducing sleepiness.


Addendum: And at least Drank isn't dangerous like the über-caffeinated energy drinks can be.



The "slow your roll" philosophy is a good one indeed. But it can be attained more naturally.


—Mellow Monk

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Prostate cancer prevention and green tea

[This slipped through the cracks, but it's still newsworthy and just one example of studies showing green tea's prostate-cancer-fighting properties. —Mellow Monk]


Medical science has learned a lot recently about prostate cancer and its prevention.

[E]vidence has mounted that increasing vitamin E and selenium intake could also protect against prostate cancer, they said. Recent research also suggests that consuming more green tea, soy, vitamin D, and lycopene (typically found in tomatoes) might confer similar benefits.

—Mellow Monk

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Green tea, weight loss, diabetes, and caffeine

I recently received an email asking about the health benefits of green tea, so I am posting my replies here.

Weight loss. To answer your question on weight loss, Commandment Number 2 in diet guru Charles Stuart Platkin's "five-pound panic" diet is:

Thou shalt drink green tea every day. It sounds crazy but it's true: Green tea helps burn fat. Two recent studies showed a 4 percent increase in metabolism in subjects who consumed green tea (rich in catechins, a type of antioxidant) at each meal versus a placebo. This may seem insignificant, but a woman who requires 1,800 calories a day could burn an extra 500 calories per week just by making this small change. That's an average of seven lost pounds per year!

And if you're a coffee drinker, switching to green tea can help you lose weight by avoiding the acids in coffee that increase your levels of insulin, which locks in fat, as Nicholas Perricone said on the Oprah show:

Oprah: Now I've read in your book that you said if I just replaced coffee with green tea instead, that I could lose 10 pounds in six weeks.

Dr. Perricone: Absolutely.

Oprah: Now really. How could that -- what is the big deal about this?

Dr Perricone: Coffee has organic acids that raise your blood sugar, raise insulin. Insulin puts a lock on body fat. When you switch over to green tea, you get your caffeine, you're all set, but you will drop your insulin levels and body fat will fall very rapidly. So 10 pounds in six weeks, I will guarantee it.

Green tea also contains theanine, which naturally enhances your feeling of well-being (thereby cutting down on stress-related snacking).

Why small-farm green tea is better. As for why our tea is better than what you'd find at the local grocery store, there are at least two main reasons: (1) Our tea is grown in a location where the tea plant thrives naturally (not where land and labor are cheapest), so it grows hearty without the use of chemical fertilizers. (2) At harvest time, our small-scale family farms harvest only what they can process into tea right away, thus locking in all the antioxidants before they're broken down by oxidation or fermentation.

A good book on green-tea basics. The best introductory book on green tea I've come across is Nadine Taylor's "Green Tea." This concise, well-written book covers everything -- the history of tea, how it's made, how green tea is different from other types of tea, and what it's health benefits are. I highly recommend it.

Green tea and caffeine. A problem with decaf green tea is that it usually contains less EGCG (one of green tea's most powerful antioxidants) than ordinary green tea.

Green tea already has about two-thirds less caffeine than coffee does. What's more, the polyphenols in green tea smooth your body's uptake of caffeine, so you get less jolt and no crash later on. Here is a somewhat lengthy article I wrote on green tea and caffeine.

Green tea and diabetes. Diabetes is no laughing matter. My own grandmother has it and my mother is working on it, so I'm trying to keep my own numbers in check naturally, and one of the "tools" I've been using is green tea. There's more on green tea and diabetes here.

How to "spice up" green tea. As for the flavor of green tea, I recommend starting out with our Genmaicha, which is green tea mixed with roasted brown rice. The rice imparts a nice nutty flavor that covers up the grassy aroma that can, I admit, take some getting used to. But the roasted brown rice doesn't chemically interfere with any of the tea's good stuff.

Other things you can add to green tea on your own include honey, pieces of fruit, and vanilla extract (just a couple of drops!), just to name a few. As for fruit, research has recently been announced that citrus fruit can boost the health benefits of green tea by allowing more of the tea's antioxidant molecules to be absorbed into the bloodstream from the body's digestive system. This is a new finding which I haven't blogged on yet, but here is an article on it.

So a way to get citrus juice into you tea would be to brew a pot of tea with a couple of pieces of dried orange peel (which is actually an Asian custom that goes back hundreds of years) or squeeze a couple of drops of citric acid from a fresh orange peel into your brewed tea, or just drop an orange or lemon wedge right into your tea.

Thanks for all your inquiries!

A scene in Aso, Japan, where our small-farm tea is grown.


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea could help prevent osteoporosis

A study at Australia's Edith Cowan University showed that women who drink tea have higher bone density and less bone loss than non-tea-drinking women.


The study was published in the The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.



Osteoporosis explained. Yikes!


—Mellow Monk

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Freshly brewed is healthier than instant

Remember, everyone — freshly brewed green tea has more antioxidants than instant tea.



Registered dietician Katherine Zeratsky talks about brewed versus instant tea.


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea caffeine — why it's better than coffee

Do you want to drink authentic loose-leaf green tea but are worried about caffeine? Well, you need not worry at all, because green tea caffeine is a whole different ballgame than coffee.


Green tea not only has much less caffeine than coffee — about 70 percent less — but it is absorbed more slowly and metabolized more slowly, too. This means that when the caffeine does kick in, you get a gentle lift, instead of a coffee-like jolt. It also means a gentle landing when the caffeine wears off, instead of a coffee-like crash.


This is yet another reason why green tea is such a mellow beverage, and why it can be your oasis of calm in an otherwise busy, hectic day.



There's a lot of goodness in these leaves — but not too much caffeine.


—Mellow Monk

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The green tea trend — still goin' strong

The Center for Culinary Development's report on culinary trends worldwide shows that green tea is still going strong:

Among the trends that made the most progress are superfoods like green tea, edamame and acai. "The trend of using ultra-healthful ingredients in categories of all kinds won't stop. In fact, the next wave of functional foods will include those that improve your mood, make you more beautiful and fill you up faster so you don't over eat," says Kimberly Egan, CEO of CCD.

Thanks, everyone, for being a part of the green tea revolution. And for those of you who haven't jumped on the bandwagon yet, why not give us a try?



Click on the images above to visit our green tea site.


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea and ovarian cancer

Researchers comparing the impact of coffee, black tea, green tea, and cola on a woman's risk of developing ovarian cancer found that women who drank at least 1 cup of green tea per day had a 54 percent lower risk of getting cancer. None of the other beverages was found to have any effect on risk.


The study concludes:

Green tea, which is commonly consumed in countries with low ovarian cancer incidence, should be further investigated for its cancer prevention properties.

The study appeared in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, which is published by the American Association for Cancer Research.



The American Association for Cancer Research, headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, commemorated its 100th year with a conference in Singapore last year.


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea and Sjogren's syndrome

Sjogren's syndrome (SS) is a common autoimmune disorder that affects up to 4 million people in the U.S. alone. It's associated with arthritis, and the most common symptoms include dry mouth and dry eyes, a result of lymphocytes (a kind of white blood cell) clustering in salivary and other glands.

Current treatment for SS is theraputic, i.e., targets the symptoms but cannot reduce or prevent damage to the glands.

However, a study published in the journal Autoimmunity suggests that epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) and other green tea polyphenols "may provide a degree of protection against autoimmune-induced tissue damage in SS.


—Mellow Monk

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Got green tea? If not, you should

From Better Nutrition, via Red Orbit.com:

"Green tea is not the ambulance that comes rushing in to whisk away illness," explains Lise Alschuler, ND, a naturopathic oncologist and coauthor of the Definitive Guide to Cancer: An Integrative Approach to Prevention, Treatment, and Healing. "It is more like an insurance policy to protect us against diseases like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes."

—Mellow Monk

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