Green Tea - Parkinson’s And Alzheimer’s

Researchers at the Technion Institute of Science in Haifa, Israel have shown that feeding green tea extract to mice with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease not only protects brain cells from breaking down, but also helps restore damaged brain cells. If you’re not already drinking green tea, now is the time to start. We’ve known for some time that drinking green tea has a distinct positive effect on brain function as we age. The incidence of age-related neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s is significantly lower among the tea-drinking Asian cultures than in both Europeans and Americans. This is the first study, however, that shows the actual effects of EGCG, the primary antioxidant in green tea, in the brain on a molecular level.

The report was presented this past September at a tea symposium in Washington, DC. A few milligrams per kilogram of bodyweight were given daily to mice with induced Parkinson’s disease. This is the dosage comparable to what you would get from drinking two to four cups of green tea a day. The EGCG prevented additional brain cells from dying, and also reduced compounds that lead to lesions in the brain. Follow-up studies found that, in addition to preventing further damage, EGCG triggered the regeneration of nerve cells that were already damaged.

Prior to this study, the general feeling was that once a neuron or nerve cell was damaged there was no way it could be repaired. While these studies involved mice, the findings have led to ongoing tests in China involving humans to see if EGCG can slow the progression of the disease. Many aspects in the mouse brain mimic ones found in humans. We would strongly suggest not waiting for the results from the establised medical to start but for you to including two to four cups of green tea in your current regimen. We have previously written about its protective effects when it comes to cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes. Knowing that it might be the first natural substance to both prevent destruction and restore neuron function in the brain should be an incentive to start drinking green tea now.