I know that a daily cup or two of tea–especially green tea–is astonishingly good for you. Unfortunately, I never developed a liking for the stuff, black or green. Probably this stems from when I had to drink black tea as a kid whenever I had a cold or the flu.
To me, green tea is simply a cheerless beverage. “Oh, boy, could I go for a cup of green tea!” will never cross my lips.
But both green and black teas are potent antioxidants–molecules that mop up disease-causing free radicals from your body. Regular tea drinkers have less heart disease and cancer, and a new study shows that women who drink tea regularly are dramatically better protected against developing ovarian cancer than those who don’t.
Researchers in Sweden enrolled almost 62,000 women between the ages of 40 and 67 for their study. Two thirds were tea drinkers (as a side note, the tea drinkers ate more fruits and vegetables than non-tea drinkers). Over the following 17 years, tea-drinking women (two cups or more per day) had a 46% lower risk of developing ovarian cancer. Moreover, each additional cup reduced the risk by another 18%.
Since ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cancer in women and very difficult to treat successfully, tea drinking is a strong recommendation, especially for women with a positive family history.
For those of you who, like me, have no great fondness for drinking two or more cups of tea every day, let me recommend capsules of green tea extract. This product has not been studied with regard to cancer prevention, but the amount of polyphenols (the cancer preventer) in each capsule is the same as in a cup of tea itself.
To read more about Green Tea Extract, click here.