How Green Tea Beats Alzheimer's Disease: Part 2

This is the second part of a multipart exploration of green tea and its effects against Alzheimer's disease. If we remember from part one of this series the first mechanism by which green tea can stop or prevent Alzheimer's disease is through its ability to chelate Iron and other free metal ions. Now I would like to introduce the second and it is something i bet you have heard alot about before. It is green teas antioxidant capacity.

Firstly though a little recap on why antioxidants are good for stopping and preventing Alzheimer's disease. In Alzheimer's disease free radicals contribute to the damage and destruction at several levels. The first is by aiding the formation of beta-amyloid plaques. These plaques then produce more free radicals once formed. These free radicals then damage more parts of the neuron resulting dysfunction in cellular energy production and transports systems. Can you guess what happens when these systems break down? More and more free radical production.

Now imagine shooting a wall with a machine gun. A few shots take some chips out of the wall. Some more and larger wall chunks may come loose. Eventually with enough shots the wall comes crashing down. This also happens in our neurons. Too many free radicals and they will die. So what if there was a way to neutralize free radicals and prevent their damage. Well there is and the molecules that do this are called antioxidants. So this brings us back to green tea and major constituents called polyphenols.

Polyphenols and in particular the polyphenols found in green tea are potent antioxidants. They are up to 100 times more powerful than vitamin C. Whats more these green tea polyphenols readily enter the brain where they are most needed in the case of Alzheimer's disease. So does it really work? To get the real scope of green teas antioxidant capacity in the brain without interferance from its other anti-Alzheimer's mechanisms we need to examine non-Azlheimer's studies. So I have examined studies of the disease "stroke". Stroke is ideal because it occurs in the brain and the damage results almost entirely from free radical production as caused by oxygen starvation.

One study involved giving gerbils differing amounts of the green tea polyphenol called EGCG. They were then given a stroke and the free radical damage to their brains examined. It was observed that the gerbils given the most EGCG had significantly lower free radical damage than those gerbils who had received none. As free radical damage from stroke is as if not more severe than that of Alzheimer's disease it is fair to suggest that green tea would at the very least reduce the free radical load on each neuron.