Let’s get something straight right off the bat: Cancer isn’t something you catch. It’s not like the flu that gets passed around the family, or something you can prevent by washing your hands. Cancer is something that gets triggered within your own body. Its initiation begins with a single screw-up in a cell’s genetic code—which can go awry for any number of reasons, including stress, poor diet, smoking, sun exposure, toxins in the environment, even just plain life and aging. Having one or more risk factors doesn’t mean that cancer is on its way—it can’t survive on its own. It actually needs to be promoted, with your help, in order to succeed against you. Cancer works like an opportunistic scavenging empire builder, feeding right off your own body.
Good news: Your immune system is programmed to not let that happen and more often than not it’s a top-notch cancer killing SWAT team. Your body stares into the face of death and saves your life daily. Of the trillions of cells alive inside you now, many thousands of them are downright nasty dudes, with the ability to seriously mess some things up in the marvelous landscape that is your physiology. Your immune system is busy keeping tabs on millions of cells 24/7. It knows exactly when to yell “Die now!” selectively putting an end to those potentially damaging cells before they get a chance to do any harm. This enormously powerful scenario plays out thousands of times each and every day. You are one beautiful piece of machinery.
Bad news: Sometimes, those detrimental cells manage to get past your protective squad. This happens when your immune system gets tricked by some cancerous monsters or it’s just overwhelmed on too many fronts to put up a good fight. Cancer begins slowly and surreptitiously, with just one or a small group of mutated cells, but not for long. The pace at which cancer cells divide and multiply cascades like an avalanche, progressing until they form together in a wicked organized group—a malignant tumor. Its malicious goal is to spread over as many parts of your human organism as it possibly can. Then your body’s left dealing with this invasive monster—much like a pine tree contending with beetle kill. And that is absolutely no joke.
Understanding cancer is difficult. Wrapping your head around how something as simple as tea could have any legitimate effect on cancer is also difficult. This chapter breaks it down step-by-step, and molecule-by-molecule, so as to allow you to understand what cellular mechanisms are happening when that tricky bastard cancer meets up with tea.
Let’s steep on.
Cancer is a term used for more than 100 different diseases that can start just about anywhere in your body. Each one of those diseases is distinct and works to destroy in unique ways, but they all have these three characteristics in common:
Every day, millions of cells divide, grow and develop to produce more cells in your body. In babies and children, cells divide rapidly to support the growth of the organism. By the time we’re adults this cell division slows down. Cancer cell growth is different from normal cell growth in that cancer cells replicate faster, without any respect for the meticulous order your body is wired for. What’s key here is that we’re talking about rapid growth of abnormal cells. They multiply faster than heck, they resist destruction in the natural course of cell death and they can overwhelm your immune system and normal healthy cells.
Because cancer cells are multiplying more rapidly, they’re consuming more of your cells’ energy reserves. If a microscopic cancer gets its start without being shut down, it will keep growing and begin to form a tumor. This requires oxygen for energy, which the cancer coerces your body into supplying by getting it to build blood vessels to deliver oxygen to the tumor-building site. Once those blood vessels are created, the cancer can invade surrounding tissues.
This unique ability is what makes cancer so ridiculously scary. When a tumor sits nicely contained in isolation somewhere in your body, it can simply be removed. Cancer is a conniving disease, though, and by invading tissues and spreading throughout your body, it is much more of a challenge to hunt down and arrest. This is cancer’s end game, and you’ve undoubtedly heard of it—metastasis.
Cancer is pure chaos. How does anything as wildly out of control as this disease ever get past your highly organized and systemized immune system?
There’s no single cause of cancer, although there are a number of underlying risk factors, such as getting too many ultraviolet rays from the sun or exposure to cigarette smoke and other toxins.
The scary thing is that people with several risk factors might never develop the disease, whereas others who do develop cancer didn’t have any of the known risk factors. To make matters more complicated, different cancers have different risk factors, and different cancers behave differently. Some people have super slow-growing cancers which they manage like a chronic disease, while others have cancers which can turn their life upside down within weeks. While some risk factors can actually provoke the onset of cancer, others (such as old age) might just be more common in people who get cancer.
Even with all of that unexplained craziness, there are a number of mitigating steps that can be taken to lessen your risk of cancer. Health organizations worldwide estimate that at least one-third of all cancer cases could be prevented. One well-referenced study from The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center points out that since only 5–10 percent of all cancer cases can be attributed to genetic predisposition that the remaining 90–95 percent have their roots in lifestyle and environment. That’s downright mind-blowing, isn’t it? The onset of the cancer monster, which is responsible for one in every four deaths in the U.S., can be prevented. Why isn’t everyone standing in line for that?
FOODS HIGH IN POLYPHENOL ANTIOXIDANTS
Cancer is lurking everywhere. All animals and even plants can get cancer. People of any age can get cancer and it can develop anywhere in your body. The average human body is made up of tens of trillions of cells. Those trillions of living, dying, growing and dividing cells require consummate order and organization. Their management has to happen in a very specific and controlled manner. When your body’s cells become defective, they die and you regenerate healthy cells. In fact, you shed the equivalent of your total body weight in dead cells each year. When you’re healthy, the birth and death of each cell is carefully controlled so that every part of you always has just the right number of cells. This process is guided by your genetic blueprint commander-in-chief deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). It’s present in each and every one of your cells and contains your entire genetic makeup. DNA is essential for telling the cells in your body how to behave.
Everyone inevitably sustains physiological strain to their cells each and every day, either as a result of the chemical processes going on to keep you alive and kicking, or because you’re fighting inflammation or noxious invaders such as tobacco smoke and ultra-violet (UV) rays. This brings on a damaging cellular condition known as oxidative stress, which produces chemically unstable molecules, called free radicals, in your body. Under optimal operating conditions, your immune system can deal with just bashing them out. But there are instances when your immune system might not be able to keep up with counteracting the effects of oxidative stress and all the free radicals being generated in your body, and this creates an imbalance favoring the onslaught of those highly reactive molecules, which can have harmful effects on your cells’ DNA. Your body’s biochemical mechanism for counteracting free radicals is to neutralize them with antioxidants. At the deepest cellular level, antioxidants stop free radicals dead in their tracks by stabilizing them chemically, before those reactive agents can chemically attack your cells’ DNA. Left unmanaged in their highly reactive state, free radicals can cause your DNA to spontaneously change its genetic message. This makes the cell no longer part of you, but a strange and screwed up mutation of you, evil doppelgänger style.
Ordinarily, the cells under attack repair their own DNA. It’s estimated that an individual cell can fix up to a million changes to its DNA every day. When it doesn’t get repaired, your immune system lets these mutations know they’re not welcome, inviting them to gracefully die off. If one of the damaged cells doesn’t die off, that mutation can continue to replicate with messed up DNA, and that’s where real trouble can set in. The genesis of cancer is due to that key genetic change to the DNA in your cells. Eventually, the strangely mutated cells will spawn a whole new hoard of cells, all with mutated DNA, and they don’t behave according to your body’s original master plan. Their mutated progeny are very high energy and may begin to act immortal in your body, since they’re not playing by your rulebook. An accumulation of mutated cells will progressively go on transforming the cells outside your normal DNA code. Most of the time, damaged cells will eventually stop reproducing on their own, or form harmless, benign tumors. But in some cases they can keep growing ravenously out of control, becoming malignant. And that spells C-A-N-C-E-R.
When cancer’s battling on unfriendly terrain, it can be forced to pump the brakes or retreat altogether. Your immune system fights cancer on multiple fronts and at every phase of its progression, beginning even before its inception, when free radicals are just beginning to cause chemical instability in your cells. Over the past several decades, we’ve seen a lot of attention on free radical chemistry, because those rascals can trigger a lot of human diseases. Your body needs to keep the balance between antioxidants and free radicals in your favor in order to maintain proper physiological function. As it turns out, cancer has its weaknesses—antioxidants are its very own Achilles’ heel. So where do these antioxidants come from?
Plants aren’t equipped with an immune system like we are, but they’re good at standing their ground against extreme environmental factors, bacterial organisms and invading critters. A plant has its own set of biochemical defenses that it depends on for its daily survival. Those are the same chemical defenders that come to our aid when we ingest plant material. As soon as a plant comes under attack, its DNA activates this army of defenders to wage chemical warfare. It can help protect the plant from threats as wide-ranging as UV radiation, disease, invading microorganisms and competing plants. Threatening pests find these chemical combatants bitter and distasteful. This is interesting because these distasteful attributes are the same compounds that provide the astringent tastes we’ve come to love in tea. These powerful warrior compounds are polyphenol antioxidants and they soldier through our cells, sacrificing themselves by neutralizing hazardous molecules gone awry. Polyphenol antioxidants are like the star players who help the immune system team play at its peak in this game.
Enter your own personal army: the tea leaf, a most powerful natural source of antioxidants.
The term “survivor” doesn’t sit well with me. As strong as I feel today, I know those cancer cells currently dormant inside me just might break into a wild rave without giving me notice, calling my body back into a seriously bad romance which I have absolutely no desire to revisit. I was lucky enough to make it through a battle, but there is no guarantee that the war is over; not for me, not for anyone.
But why tea? Why not go crazy on other antioxidant-rich choices such as blueberries, pomegranates, or better yet, dark chocolate and red wine? Tea ranks higher than most fruits and vegetables in antioxidant potential and Vitamins C and K content. In all the studies I’ve read, there’s a strong relationship between antioxidants and anti-inflammation, immune system function and anti-cancer activities in the human body. I’ve come to agree with the science that claims that cancer is a largely preventable disease and that the function of the immune system and cancer are in inextricably linked. Various medical studies from many different countries around the world have reported on tea as an anti-inflammation agent, as well as a selective immune-system booster in pursuing selective anti-cancer mechanisms. Note: In this book I don’t refer to studies done on mice, as legitimate as they may be. I’m just not educated enough to make the jump from how something works in a mouse to how it would work in my own body.
I’ve always loved tea, but over the past decade, I’ve learned to appreciate great teas and their amazing health benefits more than I would have ever thought possible. One of the things I liked about tea is that it’s a plant-based substance that exhibits some of those same selective biochemical actions as promising newer targeted cancer therapies and therefore looked like a non-toxic anti-cancer agent. If something as simple and natural as tea could help make any progress in regressing any cancerous activity and reducing the risk of recurrence, even indirectly, I was all in. It seemed to me like a win-win. So here we are. I hate cancer. I’m not leaving it all up to tea, but as an integral and consistent part of my diet and commitment to regular exercise, I view it as an added insurance policy in helping mobilize my body’s immune system against cancer. It’s become a simple and affordable daily luxury, and the fact that I love the taste, the ceremony and how it makes me feel, are just added benefits.
Not everything we dunk in water and drink as tea is actually tea, biologically speaking. The dictionary gives us a slew of definitions for tea, and these give us insight as to how loosely the term is used and why it can sometimes be confusing:
1. A hot drink made by infusing the dried, crushed leaves of the tea plant in boiling water.
2. The dried leaves used to make tea.
3. A drink made from the infused leaves, fruits or flowers of plants other than tea. Herbal tea or fruit tea.
4. Any hot drink, for example, coffee or cocoa.
5. The evergreen shrub or small tree that produces tea leaves, native to southern and eastern Asia and grown as a major cash crop.
6. A light afternoon meal consisting typically of tea to drink, sandwiches and cakes.
7. A cooked evening meal.
8. Breakfast, typically consisting of a hot drink and bread.
We’re going to stick with the first two definitions only and discuss tea as the finished leaf product of the tea plant, Camellia sinensis or its water extract.
Tea is so simple; really, it’s just leaf and water. It quenches our thirst and helps keep us hydrated. But once a tea drinker learns to appreciate the many nuances of flavor the tea leaf can embody, he or she is on their way to an amazing sensory voyage. Most cultures around the world have made tea part of their daily ritual, not because of its healing properties, but as a celebration of its culinary, aesthetic and mood-lifting qualities. Simply put, tea is one of life’s pleasures. It makes people feel better and provides a quick, relaxing escape from life’s hectic pace. This 5,000-year-old infusion is the most consumed beverage on the planet after water.
The history of medicinal herbs is rich and diverse and even older than that of tea. It includes many things we call tea, such as peppermint, chamomile and hibiscus, but strictly speaking, they’re not really tea. They’re herbals, fruits or florals. What we’re focused on here are the leaves that come from the Camellia sinensis plant. These leaves possess the unique tea health benefits we’re chasing. Teas made from this plant are classified under four main tea types: white/green, oolong, black and pu-erh. The customary way to make a tea beverage is by infusing its dried leaves into hot water, and this remains the most popular way of consuming tea today.
Camellia sinensis (the meaning in Latin is “Chinese Camellia”) is native to Southeast Asia, and now cultivated in more than 30 countries. This single species of plant yields more than 9 billion pounds (4,000 kilotonnes) of finished tea each year. Thanks to different varietals of the plant, production methods, growing and harvest season, and soil and weather conditions, one tea species produces a wildly broad range of flavors and appearances. How is it possible that a delicate and calming green tea comes from the same botanical as a nectarous and mysterious black tea? It all really comes down to the chemical process of oxidation.
Tea leaves, like all plant matter, are made up of mostly water. As soon as they’re picked off the tea plant, they start to wilt. With time and exposure to air they dehydrate and start to turn brown, or oxidize, just like any other fresh leaves would, or like a cut apple turns brown. This happens as a result of a series of enzyme-driven chemical processes in the leaves. Oxidation (no relation to oxidative stress in your cells) can be enhanced by manually manipulating, rolling and crushing the tea leaves. When leaves get to the desired level of oxidation for the type of tea that’s being produced, the process is stopped by using heat to dry the tea out completely, killing the oxidative enzymes in the leaves and halting any further oxidative action. From that point on, the tea leaves are chemically stable and they don’t change or evolve any further. What you have then is your final tea product. A longer oxidation period in the tea manufacturing process makes the leaves darker and gives them more of the traditional characteristic black tea flavor and aroma. The type of tea that Camellia sinensis turns into is entirely a function of how much oxidation it undergoes during processing.
For the four basic types of tea products manufactured, oxidation levels range from “not at all” (white/green) to “max-plus” (pu-erh).
White/Green — White teas are the closest thing to a fresh tea leaf, and they look that way—leafy and downy. Green tea is produced by pan-firing or steaming tea leaves which have not been oxidized, which is why the tea retains a fresher green color. They have a more subtle, astringent taste than darker teas, but they pack a mean antioxidant punch.
Oolong — Oolong teas span the widest oxidation range of all the tea types, ranging in levels from very little to almost as much as a black tea. Oolongs are complex, which makes them fun. They can look and taste very close to a green tea, or be as dark as a black tea, but with unexpected notes of a lighter tea. Grown primarily in China and Taiwan, they are partially oxidized before being rolled and then pan fired to finish treatment.
Black — Black tea is made from crushed tea leaves which have been through an enzyme-driven oxidation period. They’ve been given the time and air to wither and fully oxidize before being treated with heat. The longer oxidation process is what allows black teas to develop their pronounced classic black tea flavor.
Pu-erh — Pu-erh tea is fully oxidized and aged on top of that, producing a tea that will be super deep in color and aroma, reminiscent of a forest floor in a state of decomposition. While aging, this tea is contained in a tempered, humid environment in which microflora can flourish. This tea is often praised for its detoxifiction properties, earning it a side reputation as a classic hangover cure.
Tea plants can be harvested several times throughout the year. The tea harvest begins in spring, and can last from a few weeks to a few months, depending on the region and climate. Tea shrubs can be productive for many years, and in fact, some of the most prized teas come from ancient tea trees. The first (early spring) “flush” or plucking is awaited with great anticipation. Tea is an agricultural product, and growing conditions vary year to year. The complexity of taste, the variety of types and the seemingly unending ways to savor tea make it intriguing and exciting. Just as it is with different wine vintages, a favorite tea one year may not thrill you the next year—or it just might completely blow your socks off!
What’s in this leaf that makes it so special? And why is it so powerful? We need to get the chemistry down, because there’s a lot of complex stuff going on in the tea leaf. Tea is made up of thousands of different molecules. What’s going on in a live Camellia sinensis leaf changes as that leaf is processed into a finished tea product. During the processing of the tea leaf, many chemicals are broken down and transformed into new molecules. Then there’s the question of what actually infuses into your cup. Over 99 percent of what’s in your tea beverage is just plain water. Extracted molecules from the tea leaf make up only one-third of one percent of your brew, so we need to take a really close look at the tea solids that are able to make their way into your cup during the infusion process. All of the molecules featured in the diagram extract in both hot and cold water, so they can make their way into your beverage however you choose to brew your tea leaves. Spoiler alert: There’s good news for you ahead.
The following molecules are all naturally occurring plant substances called phytochemicals (phyto means “plant” in Greek). Phytochemicals encompass thousands of different compounds, many of them having unique benefits. Collectively, these nutrients are thought to be what gives plant-based foods and beverages their disease-fighting powers. Tea’s antioxidants are phytochemicals.
The type of phytochemicals which are most plentiful in your tea are the very same ones that fire up the enzymes involved in immune response—polyphenol antioxidants. They make up a full 40 percent of the active ingredients in your cup of tea. These kick-ass, immune system–boosters do a great job getting through the whole tea-making process and then infusing their way into your tea cup. What’s more, all teas contain a variety of these tea polyphenols, although their mix varies, depending on the type of tea. That’s because the chemical composition of various teas differ as a result of how they’re produced. It’s during the longer oxidation period that some simple polyphenols are converted to larger, longer polyphenol molecules. These bigger molecules are what give black tea its darker, reddish color. Tea polyphenols are among the most efficient of all free radical scavengers, and they’re more readily absorbed than most other antioxidants found in plant-based foods and beverages.
You’ll often hear the terms “polyphenols” and “flavonoids” used interchangeably, although flavonoids are actually just one type of polyphenol compound. There are more than 6,000 types of flavonoids, and they’re a very diverse group. When people recommend that you eat all the colors of the rainbow, that’s because they want you to get the beneficial flavonoid phytonutrients, which give almost all fruits and vegetables their vivid colors.
Flavanols
A yummy subset of flavonoids are flavanols, prevalent in tea, cocoa and red wine. These antioxidants have been studied extensively in humans in relation to heart health and brain function, as well as disease prevention. The FDA has not approved any health claim or approved any as pharmaceutical drugs.
Catechins
Within the flavanol family, the tea polyphenols which get top billing are the catechins (kat-eh-kins), and tea is the best source of catechins in the human diet. Catechins are particularly active flavanols and super potent antioxidants in free radical scavenging.
EGCg
The most dynamic of the catechins is epigallocatechin gallate (EGCg). EGCg is the darling of tea polyphenols with good reason. Studies have shown that its antioxidant capacity is 100 times more powerful than vitamin C in protecting DNA from damage by free radicals. Its also been shown to be twice as powerful as resveratrol, the key antioxidant in red wine. Although there are many different types of beneficial compounds in tea, current research indicates that EGCg is the polyphenol antioxidant with the broadest and most potent ability to protect your body’s cells from cancer.
Polyphenols are the strongest biologically active agents in tea, but there are other fun tea molecules in your cup as well. Two of those key players are caffeine and theanine.
Say hello. Caffeine is the best known molecule in tea, and the most prized over the ages. People crave it—you might have a love/hate relationship with it. It increases perceived energy levels as well as cognitive ability, and it’s one of the most studied ingredients in the plant world. Tea leaves contain about 2 to 5 percent caffeine by weight. Different steeping recommendations for different types of tea means that each cup will vary in caffeine levels. The longer you steep your tea, the more caffeine you’ll get in your cup. It’s also important to note that the effects of caffeine in tea are often reported as being different than the effects of caffeine from coffee. This is thought to be due to an amino acid unique to tea: theanine.
Theanine
L-Theanine, also simply known as theanine (thee-ah-neen), is the feel-good active ingredient in tea. Together with caffeine, as it occurs naturally in tea, it can produce a calm, yet focused state of mind. This amino acid is psychoactive, which means that it crosses your blood-brain barrier and goes to work in your head. Specifically, theanine increases alpha brain wave activity, which helps to relax the mind without inducing drowsiness, creating a state of deep relaxation in combination with mental alertness. Research has indicated that theanine can improve the speed, performance and accuracy in demanding tasks requiring cognition. (Translation: It will make you more productive at school or at work.) It’s also thought to reduce attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) hyperactivity and is used as a natural alternative to ADHD prescriptions.
Tea is a plant-based beverage. When you steep tea, you’re extracting its powerful nutrients. They work like a healing blanket for your body’s cells, nourishing them and shutting down active agents and precursors of disease, whether you’re healthy or ailing. Despite its amazing healing power, most of us only begin to learn about tea’s significant effects on our bodies when we’re already faced with disease. Green tea is on a serious marketing high and you can find it at or near the top of any superfoods list. Let’s get another thing straight: This isn’t just a passing fad. People have been turning to this ancient elixir as a healthy beverage for almost 5,000 years and treatises on its health benefits have been written for over 1,000 years. Now, thanks to modern science, we have many medical studies to further illuminate these benefits. Americans have one of the highest rates of cancer incidence on the globe. Population studies have shown that cultures that are heavy tea drinkers have far lower cancer rates than Westerners. In particular, studies of human diets have linked populations who drink large amounts of green tea with lower risk for breast, ovarian, prostate, bladder, colon, pancreatic and esophageal cancers. Tea is the second most consumed beverage worldwide, behind water; but only sixth on the list in the U.S. behind water, soda, beer, milk and coffee. Part of the reason for tea’s global appeal is cost-effectiveness, but the irony for those populations who can’t afford bottled drinks is that the pure tea they’re drinking is much better for them.
The concept of disease prevention by use of plant-based foods (and beverages such as tea) has been studied as a practical approach for thousands of years. In fact, tea’s legacy began as one of a healthful beverage. Its historical beginnings in China date from 2737 BC, when the Chinese emperor Shen Nung, granddaddy of modern agriculture, is credited with its discovery. He was responsible for encouraging his people, who were suffering from the plague, to start boiling water before drinking it. The legend goes that the emperor was boiling a vat of water near a Camellia sinensis plant, and when a leaf floated in and infused the water, it produced an enchanting elixir that left the emperor feeling refreshed when he sipped the beverage. Thus tea was born. It’s likely that tea was probably considered a medicinal beverage for the first few thousand years, and likely consumed like a vegetable in soup mixed with other ingredients such as salt, onions, orange peel and ginger.
If you look at dietary polyphenols consumed by all humans around the globe, tea is the number one source. Each cup of freshly brewed whole leaf tea can serve up over 200 mg of polyphenol antioxidants. By contrast, a serving of kale has about one-third as many and a serving of berries approximately one-half. Tea also shows higher antioxidant activities against free radicals than spinach, garlic and Brussels sprouts. Another point to keep in mind when comparing the antioxidant capacity of different foods and beverages is that it takes just a couple of grams of loose leaf tea to brew one cup. Gram for gram and penny for penny, tea is in the antioxidants bargain bin.
The benefits of having tea in your system manifest themselves in a myriad of ways. Tea helps to manage free radicals. (Think inflammation, stress and even signs of aging in skin.) It also has antibacterial properties, helping to protect your body from bacterial agents entering your body. (Think bad breath and stomach disorders.) Tea polyphenols damage the structure of microbes by attacking their cell membranes and by inhibiting bacterial enzymes essential to their growth. Drinking tea is a cost-effective way to detox, and yes, it works great as a hangover cure (especially pu-erh tea). Tea has also been shown to be an effective weapon in humans in the fight against cholesterol and high blood pressure. Studies also have shown that tea polyphenols could inhibit the onset and severity of arthritis in humans. Tea has even been shown to be effective against allergic reactions, as EGCg has been shown to block a key biochemical process in allergic responses. Tea is also known as the secret of the skinny—but thin can’t compete with healthy!
When cancer’s winning against you, it succeeds in getting its rogue cells to multiply wildly out of control, triggers inflammation inside you and works to plunder your organism for blood vessels to fuel its tumor’s growth. It stays 100 percent focused on wreaking havoc on your system in its glorious killer plan for metastasis to other organs in your body. The antioxidants in tea work like multitasking fiends to bash cancer during every stage in its attempted coup. Here are three ways tea can help you in the battle:
1. Research studies show tea polyphenols as being highly effective free radical scavengers. This puts the brakes on chemical mechanisms of oxidative stress. A whopping 40 percent of the active compounds in your tea are polyphenol antioxidants, whose action provides an additional layer of protection for your cells and molecules. This layer mitigates the possibility of abnormal cell growth caused by damage to your cellular DNA. Tea helps keep your first line of defense—your immune system—buzzing. The best way to piss off cancer is to never even let it get a foothold against you.
2. The proliferation of cancer requires enlisting your body’s assistance to build a network of blood vessels, which becomes the tumor’s mainline for oxygen and nutrients. Your body can actually get tricked into responding to these signals positively, not realizing the tumor growth is out to destroy it. If your body refuses to build these energy resources, cancerous cells die from lack of oxygen and nutrients, and the malignancy simply can’t progress. Cancer cells need to be able to send signals to one another, as well as trickster messages to call your body for help to keep it growing. Tea fights cancer in this stage of progression by enlisting EGCg to inhibit the signaling—a very excellent tool in cancer defense.
3. To become a full-fledged malignancy, cancer cells need to achieve their goal of spreading to other organs in your body. To get this going, cancer needs to totally abolish your body’s plan for natural cell death. Recent studies have indicated that tea catechins assist in the molecular mechanisms that regulate cell death, which is crucial in the regression of cancer in humans. The science suggests that tea polyphenols can work as anti-tumor agents by derailing cancer from its grand plan for limitless growth in your body.
Cancer treatment is a serious test. Cancer is a challenging disease to treat because the selective killing of tumor cells without harming too many healthy cells or the immune system is incredibly complicated. Annihilating all the malignant cells without actually killing the patient in the process sometimes requires therapies which feel like a chemical sledgehammer in the hands of a Neanderthal with bad aim. Cancer treatments being developed today employ selective targeting techniques, focusing on specifically attacking only cancer cells and their biochemical mechanisms. Their goal is to inhibit these processes, while minimizing harm to normal cells.
Tea polyphenols work in much the same way. They target many of the same specific cancer growth mechanisms. The therapeutic effectiveness of tea is in inhibiting the genesis, development and proliferation of cancers. There are studies that conclude positive health benefits of drinking tea against cancer progression, as well as studies that are inconclusive or show no benefits. The results are mixed. But taken in ensemble, the evidence weighs in strongly on the positive side for tea’s antioxidant, anti-cancer benefits. Tea alone will not cure or prevent cancer. But everyone should know about the benefits of drinking tea. Steep like mad. Drink like your life depends on it. This small change to your every day can make a big difference. And cancer will just hate it.
