Green Tea Health

If you’re feeling kind of slow and tired, and just generally not on top of things, perhaps you should consider a detox. Bloating, bad breath, blemishes, tiredness, a lack of energy, dull hair and skin and digestive disorders are all signs that you have an excess of toxins built up in your body. And these toxins can come from anything – cookies, wine, Thanksgiving dinner, cigarette smoke… because these toxins are in everything, they’re hard to avoid.

A natural detox is recommended once a year to rid your system of all these toxins. Organs to focus on are the liver, kidneys, large intestines and the skin. A detox usually is marked by a fast, or by eating an incredibly specific diet, along with taking vitamins. Most detoxes last a few weeks and will leave you feeling energized and alert.

Green tea has long been used in China as a remedy for everything from headaches to depression, but it is only recently that it gained notoriety in the western world as something beneficial. The benefits of green tea are many, and most are due to the positive effects of epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), an anti-oxidant that also limits the negative effects of smoking and fatty diets, and decreases the likeliness of heart disease. EGCG also inhibits the growth of cancer cells, and kills cancer cells without harming the healthy tissue.

A 1994 study by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute demonstrated this fact when it released a study showing that drinking green tea reduced the risk of esophageal cancer in Chinese men and women by nearly 60 percent. Green tea also reduces the amount of bad cholesterol, and helps with rheumatoid arthritis, infection, and impaired immune function, among many other things.