Western Medical Research – It Keeps Going and Going and Going…
This is a good thing. When it comes to true tea (Camellia sinensis), it demonstrates that thousands of years of recorded medical observation from the Orient has validity and application to present day peoples. When even expert translation from the ancient languages and archaic contexts of those earliest researchers is problematic, modern researchers will come up with their own descriptions of why true tea is healing us still.
Some tea connoisseurs may tire of the media’s insistent, often skewed coverage of green (and recently white and next puer) tea’s remarkable health benefits. These reports can seem unreliable and our interpretation of them can be even more sketchy, especially for those of us who lack a solid background in biochemistry and scientific research protocol. The media’s oversimplification of some findings and verbatium presentation of other, often obscure, data doesn’t make matters any better.
Having the fortunate assignment to wade through the literature that finds its way online, I get to look over this material every day. At first glance, the thousands of news blurbs about green tea may remind one of the adage, ‘making a mountain out of a molehill’. On closer examination, the reader realizes that each of these researchers are coming at the topic with very different questions, different funding sources, working from within very different institutions and often using a broad spectrum of actual tea (i.e. using warehoused Lipton; RTD tea; extract derived from fannings; or farm fresh organic Bai Mu Dan). Nonetheless, the scientific literature continues to unfold a complicated story of how tea benefits and enriches the health of humankind.
The latest work to see a substantial press release is that of Dr. Stephen Hsu, researcher at the Medical College of Georgia – School of Dentistry. Dr. Hsu’s research inquires into whether green tea makes an impact on autoimmune disease as well as its well-known anti-carcinogenic effects.
Green Tea May Protect Against Autoimmune Diseases
FRIDAY, June 17
[Health Day News]
http://health.ivillage.com/eating/enews/0,,wbnews_7vdfb7zh,00.html?par=ibs|wb|related
Doctor finds new green tea benefit may help with autoimmune diseases
06/28/2005
[Augusta, Georgia, USA]
http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/index.php?s=&url_channel_id=43&url_article_id=3627&url_subchannel_id=&change_well_id=2
Green Tea Found To Help Autoimmune Disorders and Cancer
June 22, 2005
[Atlanta, Georgia, USA]
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/cgi-bin/news/newsbrief.plx?id=2238920182&fa=1
Green Tea May Protect Against Autoimmune Diseases
Wednesday June 22, 2005
[Pakistan]
http://paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=110223
MCG researcher studies green tea’s protective role in autoimmune disease
Published on: 2005-06-19
http://i-newswire.com/pr25987.html
Dr. Hsu’s faculty page at Medical College of Georgia – School of Dentistry
http://www.iris.mcg.edu/ifl/Queries/viewfac.asp?faculty=qsgtpvpzv
-jda
