The Dark Side of Drinking Green Tea

We all know that Green Tea is hailed as one of the most healthful beverages in the world. Some would even revere green tea at mystical level. Green tea is credited for it’s most coveted anti-oxidant contents purported by drinkers and zealots for a feeling of wellness and well-being. Well, as scientific literature has it, it does contain health optimizing substances such as Catechins and Polyphenols.

However, it is a little disheartening when someone or something burst your bubble of belief about something you’ve been practicing for a long time. And that prickly information that will puncture your belief bubble about green tea is that it may cause untoward health effects.

No, it’s not caffeine, if you think it is. But some of the known antioxidants found in green tea tend to recoil upon themselves and form something called Tannins.

Now, one renowned Japanese-American doctor is the harbinger of this bad news about green tea. Dr. Hiromi Shinya, M.D., a renowned General Surgeon and master in Colonoscopy, said he has some bad intuition about these antioxidants in green tea.

Explaining himself, he observed that in thousands and thousands of colonoscopies he has done and peering into each and every patient’s intestine, he found that Japanese (who are fond of green teas) has unhealthy gut or stomach characteristics. In fact, tea instructors who obviously consume considerable amount of green tea at regular basis incur stomach issues known as Atrophic Gastritis. This stomach problem is an antecedent to stomach cancer later on if left unchecked.

In a nutshell, Hiromi asserted that his 300,000 clinical observations as general surgeon specializing in gastrointestinal wellness, bring him to conclude that someone with poor gastrointestinal function is never healthy at all. And it might be hard for us to take in, that green tea is one drink that might lead to this.

Now, we are being educated unwittingly that we always see health at a selective and specialized nutrition. Seeing a particular tree for a forest. A particular antioxidant for a green tea.

Take for example Polyphenol found in green tea, there is no question this antioxidant neutralizes and puts free radicals in check inside our body. However, when several of these antioxidants (polyphenols or others), are fused it becomes a corrosive substance known as tannins. Tannin is the reason why some plants and fruits have biting taste in it. Tannin is easily oxidized by air or water. And when it does, it turns to Tannic Acid.

It turns out, according to Hiromi’s clinical observation, tannic acid has corrosive effect on our intestinal mucosa. This mucosa is an essential membrane that line the wall of our stomach. This corrosive effect of tannic acid causes stomach issues such as ulcers.

The mucosal membrane is literally wasting away. In the long run, this atrophic change turns to chronic gastritis. And this long enduring gastric disturbance in turn can lead to stomach cancer. This was observed by Hiromi Shinya in the stomach of his patients who are avid drinkers of tea beverages – could it be Green Tea, Chinese Tea, English Black Tea or Coffee containing high amount of tannic acid.

“Professor Masayaki Kawanishi of Mie University during the Japanese Cancer Conference, September of 2003, presented a report stating that “antioxidant can damage DNA”. This included the consideration that tea culture and cultivation are using harmful pesticides specially in green tea commercialization.”

There is even a study presented by Masayuki Kawanishi of Mie University that “antioxidant can damage your DNA”. This one is heavy to take heart into. Your mind might still be wrestling with this fact, if you see it as a matter-of-fact. Consider putting together, tannic acid, coffee and the commercial agri-chemicals used, you’d be better off drinking pure water.

The brighter side however, if you can’t put down your ever endeared morning tea cup, is to sort out for organically grown tea leaves. Which means free from the adulteration of commercial tea farming chemicals. You should drink your tea after meals and not before it. An empty stomach is a vulnerable target for tannic acid. And tip down 2-3 cups of tea maximum daily if you can.

And the final heads up for you is that to always appreciate your health and body as a whole. Well, there are benefits to medical specialization as well as there are setbacks to it. Always remember, that everything in your body is interconnected. One metabolic disorder known as diabetes, causes your eyes, kidneys and heart to malfunction as well. Treating the kidney disease alone don’t treat the metabolic disorder. But medical specialization causes us to see one from the other. Also goes in choosing our food, we tend to be specialist. We look for one nutrient and disregard the rest.

Nope.

Just because, one nutrient found in a food (in this case, polyphenol/antioxidant in green tea) is good for a one part of the body does not mean that it will be good for the rest. You won’t be able to decide whether a food has nutritional truism or not by just looking at one ingredient. Because sometimes we’d all be far off being generalists rather than specialist.

FIME

Author's Corner

Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault was, had I not been made of common clay. I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day. From the wildness of my wasted passion I had struck a better, clearer song, Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled with some Hydra-headed wrong. – Oscar Wilde