Reduce Your Risk Of Dying By 30 Percent-Drink Green Tea

I'll start this article by revealing that I'm not objective about the topic. In fact, I have an conflict of intense interest: I love green tea.

I start just about every day with two pieces of rye toast and pot of green tea, and I usually make myself a second pot around noon. (I eat a late lunch, around 1:30 PM.)

I've noticed that it does exactly what studies on green tea and weight control say it does: reduces appetite.

I've read dozens of those studies in the last year as I wrote my new book, The Natural Fat-Loss Pharmacy: Drug-Free Remedies To Help You Safely Lose Weight, Shed Fat, Firm Up, And Feel Great (Broadway 2007). You can find out more about this book, and all my books on health and healing, at my website, www.drugfreehealing.com.

The studies I read also show that the main ingredients in green tea can increase calorie-burning by as much as 180 calories a day. Maybe green tea is doing that for me: I weigh 158 pou nds-just a few pounds over my weight in high school.

And the gentle level of caffeine in the tea helps power me through the morning without the extreme ups and downs that I tend to experience when I drink (okay: guzzle) coffee.

The most active health-ingredient in green tea is a powerful antioxidant called epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG.

Each year, there are literally thousands of studies conducted on EGCG, with scientists showing it protects and strengthens just about every cell and system in the body.

It shields brain cells from damage, stopping Alzheimer's in mice genetically programmed to develop the disease.

In the laboratory, it reverses many different types of cancer, and is being tested in clinical trials at the Mayo Clinic for leukemia and at the University of Arizona for bladder cancer.

It can lower cholesterol, strengthen the immune system and protect the heart.

And now a new study-published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association, in September 2006-shows that people who drink green tea aren't just healthier. They live longer, too.

The study was conducted by a team of Japanese doctors. They looked closely at health statistics from a 10-year study of 40,530 men and women in Japan, aged 40 to 79. And they found that, as these people aged, those who drank the most green tea had the lowest death rates from any cause, and also the lowest death rates from heart disease. The specifics:

Men who 1 to 2 cups of green tea per day were 7% less likely to die during the years of the study than people who didn't drink green tea. At a daily intake of 5 cups or more, they were 12% less likely to die.

Women got even more protection from green tea: an 18% lower death rate among those drinking 3 to 4 cups, and a 23% lower death rate among those drinking 5 cups or more.

When scientists lo oked at heart disease-which kills 1 out of every 2 people, here in America-they found the protection was even stronger. Women who drank 5 or more cups of tea a day had a 31% lower risk of dying from heart disease than women who didn't drink green tea!

Tea also protected against stroke, in men and women.

Needless to say, I'm not planning to break my green tea habit. Based on this study, it might be a habit you may want to consider for yourself.