Mother-to-baby benefits of green tea

Research conducted at Oregon State University and reported in the journal Carcinogenesis suggests that pregnant women who drink green tea may confer cancer-fighting benefits to their babies.


—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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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 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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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 reply 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. In fact, that sounds so yummy, I think I'll do that right now!

Thanks for all your inquiries.

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


—Mellow Monk

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Lack of sleep can cause psychiatric disorders

Lack of sleep has been linked to all sorts of health problems, from immune system disorders to weight gain and even psychiatric disorders.


Yikes!


A great way to naturally promote sound sleep is good old-fashioned exercise. And it doesn't have to be strenuous, either. I've heard more than a few folks swear by their daily one-hour walk—that without it, they'd soon go back to having trouble sleeping at night.


Green tea can also help promote sound sleep—especially if you're currently a java junkie. That's because green tea has much less caffeine than coffee (about two-thirds less). Green tea also contains theanine, which promotes relaxation and generally positive feelings.


For those who are highly sensitive to caffeine, I suggest trying our hojicha (roasted green tea), which has about a third of the caffeine as ordinary green tea.



Don't let this happen to you.


—Mellow Monk

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Yet another report on the many benefits of green tea

This article summarizes a lot of recent research findings. For instance, tea (especially green tea):

• Fights prostate cancer.
  
• Raises levels of good cholesterol (HDL).
  
• Improves concentration.
  

The way tea makes us mellow and focused is the synergy between its theanine and caffeine—tea has just the right amounts of each. For instance, researchers

found that as little as 100 milligrams of theanine enabled people to focus better on complicated tasks, but only when consumed with 60 milligrams of caffeine—a combination found in roughly four cups of green tea (which contains half as much caffeine as black).

The news just keeps getting better for green tea drinkers, so keep on brewing, everyone!



If that were green tea it would be even healthier.


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea and caffeine

One topic I’m asked about a lot is green tea and caffeine. Java junkies are worried it doesn’t have enough, and caffeine-sensitive folks are worried it has too much. But the fact is that green tea, magical drink that it is, is in the Goldilocks zone when it comes to caffeine: not too much, and not too little, but just the right amount. Not only that, but you can adjust the amount of caffeine to suit your own personal tastes—to feed your need for speed, or to let you sleep soundly at night.

First of all, a cup of brewed green tea contains roughly one-third the caffeine as the same amount of brewed coffee. Some people say they’ve heard that green tea contains more caffeine than coffee does, but that’s true only if you’re talking about dried tea leaves versus coffee beans. By weight, dried green tea contains more caffeine than coffee, but tea goes a lot longer than coffee does: A pound of dried green tea leaves would brew enough liquid tea to fill a hot tub, whereas a pound of coffee wouldn’t come close. In other words, you use a lot less green tea by weight to brew a cup of tea, which is why an infusion of green tea ends up containing roughly a third of the caffeine.

If you really need a caffeine fix, you can always brew your tea on the strong side. Simply use more tea leaves—say, two teaspoons per 8-ounce mug instead of one. One of the many nice things about green tea is that it’s not acidic like coffee is, so a strong infusion won’t upset your stomach the way coffee can.

Green tea, mellow beverage that it is, is also a gentler way to get your caffeine fix. That’s because green tea’s oh-so-healthy polyphenols regulate the body’s uptake of caffeine. Consequently, the caffeine load is spread out more evenly and over a longer period. That means no jump-out-of-your-chair jolt, but it also means no crash-and-burn, either. Like a gentle lover, green tea lets you down easy.

But let’s say you’ve been restless lately and are worried about getting a good night’s sleep for a big interview tomorrow. What you can do is decaffeinate your green tea yourself. That’s right: There’s no need to buy industrially decaffeinated green tea, which can contain trace amounts of ethyl acetate—and who wants any of that in their body?

To make your own decaffeinated green tea, here's all you need to do:

First, let your green tea steep for about 30 seconds, then throw out that infusion. Next, re-steep the tea as you normally would. That's it. You're done.

Since caffeine seeps out into hot water much more quickly than the tea's "good stuff," the second infusion will contain 80 percent less caffeine than a "virgin" infusion. Since green tea already contains about 66 percent less caffeine than coffee, that comes out to less than 7 percent of the caffeine in a cup of coffee, if my math is correct.

(And if you let that first infusion steep for a full minute, you will have removed essentially all of the caffeine from the tea leaves.)

Also, instead of throwing away that caffeine-rich first infusion, you could save it to drink later, or water your houseplants with it, or even store up a pitcher full in the refrigerator to, say, drink in the morning.

If your tolerance for caffeine is extremely low, you could also try hojicha, which is simply green tea that has been roasted briefly. The roasting not only imparts a smoky aroma but also zaps a lot of the caffeine. Oh, and Mellow Monk happens to sell hojicha, by the way. To read more about our hojicha and other greens, click here.

Keep on brewin', everyone!

—Mellow Monk

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Five myths about sleep

This week being National Sleep Awareness Week, it's perfect timing to read up on the five myths about sleep.

Incidentally, if you like to relax with green tea in the evening but are worried about cafeeine keeping you awake at night, you easily decaffeinate the tea yourself. Simply pour hot water over your tea as you normally would, wait between 30 and 60 seconds, then throw out the infusion and brew the tea again.

When tea is brewed, the caffeine leaches out more quickly than other compounds, so the second infusion will still give you the flavor, aroma, and health benefits that you want from green tea.


—Mellow Monk

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Bad news for bottled tea (and decaf and instant, too)

This is bad, bad news for anyone who sells or drinks decaffeinated green tea, instant green tea, or ready-to-drink green tea. But it's great news for fans of natural loose-leaf green tea (such as that humbly offered by yours truly).

Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released an update of its database on the flavonoid content of foods. (Flavonoids, also called bioflavonoids, are a category of compounds that include catechins and other strong antioxidants. Scientific evidence has consistently shown that eating foods high in flavonoids reduces your risk of cancer and heart disease.)

The USDA's numbers haven't changed much since the first release of the database. Still, the new release provides a good occasion to revisit the clear superiority of natural loose-leaf green tea when it comes to the health benefits that we all expect from our green tea.

Take epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), for instance. EGCG is not only one of the most important flavonoids in green tea (because of its powerful antioxidant properties); it's also found only in green tea.

The USDA database tells us that brewed loose-leaf green tea contains 77.81 milligrams of EGCG per 100 grams of infusion. Decaffeinated green tea, however, contains 66 percent less EGCG—only 26.05 mg/100 g.

For green tea that comes ready to drink in a can or bottle, the news is even worse: its EGCG count is a measely 3.96 mg/100 g, or only 5 percent of the EGCG content of brew-it-yourself loose-leaf tea.

(The reason is that within a couple of hours of brewing, green tea catechins begin to break down. The lesson, grasshopper, is that if you want bottled or canned green tea that's rich in catechins, you must go to the factory, snatch it as it rolls off the line, and guzzle it down quickly as you use your kung-fu techniques to escape the security guards chasing you.)

Bringing up the rear is instant green tea, which barely registers with an EGCG count of 0.45 mg/100 g (decaf instant) or 0.49 mg/100 g (regular instant). The cruel math says that's only half a percent as much EGCG as natural loose-leaf green tea.

To summarize, brewing your own hot, tasty green tea infusion from natural loose-leaf green tea is the healthiest way to go—and the tastiest, too.

And there are no security guards to deal with, either.

By the way, you can download the full "database" (actually a PDF file) here.


—Mellow Monk

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OD'ing on caffeine

Overdosing on caffeine and ending up in the emergency room is not an urban legend; it really happens.

Green tea naturally contains caffeine, but only about 30 percent as much as coffee does on a cup-by-cup basis. In addition to a lighter caffeine load, the antioxidants in green tea slow the body's uptake of caffeine, spreading that caffeiene load over a longer period of time. This helps avoid the "crash" that java junkies experience when their caffeine level suddenly plummets.

In short, when it comes to caffeine, green tea gives you a smooth takeoff and a gentle landing.


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea is the best source of caffeine, says doctor

At AnOunceOfPrevention.org, Dr. Tony Vendryes states that green tea is the best source of caffeine.


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea, the strong persuader

A study shows that people are more open to suggestions (such as "Can I have a raise?") after they've consumed caffeine.

It could be that caffeine simply puts a person in a good mood, and when someone is in a good mood, they’re usually more amenable to doing the right thing.

If that’s the case, then green tea should do an even better job—it contains theanine, which has been shown to make people mellow.

—Mellow Monk

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The caffeine trap

Here's an excerpt of a National Geographic article about caffeine.

A neurologist interviewed for the article describes what could be called "the caffeine trap":

"The principal reason that caffeine is used around the world is to promote wakefulness," [Harvard Medical School neurologist Charles] Czeisler says. "But the principal reason that people need that crutch is inadequate sleep. Think about that: We use caffeine to make up for a sleep deficit that is largely the result of using caffeine."

—Mellow Monk

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Green tea as part of a stress-reduction diet

This page discusses dietary factors that contribute to stress.

However, the author of the text fails to mention green tea and the two very important ways in which it can help reduce stress.

First, not only does green tea have less caffeine (which in excessive amounts can contribute to stress) than coffee, but the antioxidants in green tea also coat the caffeine molecules in certain ways that slow the uptake of caffeine into the body. Slow uptake means a gentler boost, whereas with coffee, which lacks these antioxidants, the caffeine level in the blood first spikes and then drops suddenly as the body works overtime to break down all that caffeine. These sudden changes in blood levels of caffeine are responsible for the jolt and crash associated with drinking lots of caffeinated coffee.

Second, green tea is rich in theanine, which promotes relaxation by increasing the level of gamma-aminobutyric acid in the body and by increasing alpha-wave production in the brain, for instance.

—Mellow Monk

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Caffeine in green tea and coffee

An 8-ounce cup of green tea contains, on average, about 30 milligrams of caffeine—about one-third the caffeine content of coffee. But apparently some brands of coffee contain truly serious amounts of caffeine.

Here's a website where you can see how many cups of various caffeine-containing beverages it would take to be fatal.

—Mellow Monk

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