Increasing Life Expectancy With Green Tea
The many health benefit claims of green tea have been subjected to close scrutiny by the members of the global scientific community for a number of years now, but no other reported health benefit has been the examined more closely than green tea’s supposed ability to increase life expectancy.
The Japanese green tea study
In a study conducted by Japanese researchers in 1994, 40,000 subjects aged 40 to 79, who where then free from cancer, stroke, and heart disease were monitored for up to 11 years. The subjects that later died were examined as to the cause of death and their green tea consumption was analyzed as well. The results of the study were nothing short of astounding. It was found that the test subjects that drank more green tea were less likely to die from these diseases. Interestingly enough, these results were even more pronounced in women than in men.
More green tea, better health?
It seemed that the more green tea was consumed, the less likely a person would die from these diseases. In fact, the test subjects that drank 5 or more cups of green tea every day were least likely to die from any cause at all during the course of the study. Keep in mind however that the deaths that were caused by cancer were not tied in with the consumption of green tea in any way.
So does this mean that green tea can prevent these as well as other diseases? While all the date gathered remains inconclusive at this point, there is no denying the findings that the greater consumption of green tea in these subjects may have had a beneficial effect with regard to increasing their life expectancy.
What all this means
What most experts do seem to agree on is that drinking green tea is likely to benefit your heart and that drinking one or more cups of green tea a day will reduce the risk of you dying from cardiovascular disease. What us still uncertain is for how long you will need to drink green tea regularly in order to get this benefit.
Keeping in mind that the people in the study drank green tea every day for up to 11 years, it is difficult to determine how that period affected their life expectancy. With the study’s findings that drinking as much as 5 cups of green tea a day will offer significant levels of protection against heart disease, there may be some benefit to be gained by incorporating green tea into your daily regimen.
In any case, there are various other benefits to be gained from drinking green tea regularly–not the least of which is the general feeling of good health that it provides–so it is certainly worth looking into.