Now we can’t drink tea!

If you’re a man and you live in Scotland do not drink tea. According to a BBC report >7 cups a day give you a >50% greater chance of developing prostrate cancer than “normal” tea drinkers. This was a study over 37 years involving 6000 volunteers aged between 21 & 75 years of age. I’m surprised they didn’t choose whisky and/or beer (they have probably been checked at some point in distant past). This is in direct contrast to a National Cancer Institute report which suggests the opposite at least for green tea.

What’s next I wonder, coffee is already on the black list, as well as fatty foods smoking, no doubt sex will also rear it’s ugly head in the list of cancer producing agents, water is also dangerous, fish swim in it and you can drown as well. Well Wiki says it has healthy effects.

So what’s in tea that makes it so harmful?

Well there is theanine and caffeine, making up about 3% of its dry weight up to 90mg per cup, depending upon the tea. There are things like theobromine (or should it be teaobromine) and theophylline.

tea compoundsTheanine moves across the blood brain barrier (quite distant from the prostrate) and has a synergistic effect with caffeine, high doses even providing a neuroprotective effect. Caffeine is a stimulant and the author of the Wiki page suggests that it may even have moderately protective effect against certain cancers. So that’s probably not the cause of this higher prostrate cancer risk.

What else? Up to 30% of the dry weight of tea are the catechins. This looks like a possible candidate! Some present in green tea are shown below.

tea01

Just look at all those nasty phenols, they may even have antioxidant properties.

The tea plant apparently has the capacity to absorb lots of the pollutants we pump out every day, aluminium and fluoride the former can be present up to 30,000ppm by dry weight!

So everyone, what shall we drink now? How about red wine, with all that resveratrol it must be good for you. Enjoy your tea breaks.

 

 

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Prof. dangerdackel (199 Posts)


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