Cardew Club News » 2008 » March

Green tea can help beat superbugs according to Egyptian scientists speaking March, 31, 2008 at the Society for General Microbiology’s 162nd meeting.

The pharmacy researchers have shown that drinking green tea helps the action of important antibiotics in their fight against resistant superbugs, making them up to three times more effective.

Green tea is a very common beverage in Egypt, and it is quite likely that patients will drink green tea while taking antibiotics. The medical researchers wanted to find out if green tea would interfere with the action of the antibiotics, have no effect, or increase the medicines’ effects.

With names such as Hummingbird Nectar and Peaceful Peninsula, the organic teas and tisanes of Angela Macke are blended with both taste and good health in mind. The former registered nurse-turned-master gardener became interested in the many health and medicinal benefits of tea several years ago. She grows most of the ingredients of her 36 blends of black, green, white, and oolong teas, and fruit mélange, chakras, and tisanes on her 12-acre property in Michigan. Macke, the founder of Light of Day Organics, will be in Delaware on Saturday, April 5, to host a tea workshop sponsored by The Global Village Collection, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Andrews House, 39 West Winter Street.

Spanish and British scientists have discovered how green tea helps to prevent certain types of cancer.

Researchers at the University of Murcia in Spain (UMU) and the John Innes Center (JIC) in Norwich, England have shown that a compound called EGCG in green tea prevents cancer cells from growing by binding to a specific enzyme.

“We have shown for the first time that EGCG, which is present in green tea at relatively high concentrations, inhibits the enzyme dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR), which is a recognized, established target for anti-cancer drugs, ” says Professor Roger Thorneley, of JIC.

A truly English tea is being plucked and brewed at the country’s first tea estate in Cornwall. Plus two delicious Fairtade teatime recipes.

The South West is the home of the cream tea and it can now be enjoyed at a whole host of locations in the region with a truly English cuppa.

England’s first tea estate at Tregothnan, in Cornwall, takes advantage of the mild climate and humidity to grow Chinese and Indian leaf tea which is hand-picked from April to October and blended with other exotic leaves to make four different varieties (Classic, Afternoon, Earl Grey and Green).

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past decade, you probably know that tea has more than a few health benefits. But if you’ve relied on bagged teas for your fix, you may be convinced that all tea is bitter.

Thankfully, you’re wrong. A cup of tea, prepared correctly, doesn’t require a load of none-too-healthy sugar.

But therein lies the problem: A pile of leaves doesn’t come with directions, and the number of tea gadgets on the market makes you want to run back to the bagged-tea aisle.

Scientists in the UK have found that drinking black tea could help prevent diabetes.

The report, which is published in the latest issue of the journal ‘Aging Cell’, indicates that certain constituents of tea could act as an insulin substitute, potentially able to combat type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease.

Diabetes develops when the body fails to make enough insulin. Researchers at Scotland’s Dundee University found that several black tea constituents, known as theaflavins and thearubigins, mimicked insulin action, the BBC online reported.

Drinking tea could help combat diabetes, scientists have claimed.

The potentially therapeutic properties in black tea have been discovered by scientists at the University of Dundee.

Green tea has long been held to possess various health benefits.

Dr Graham Rena, of the university’s Neurosciences Institute, said his team’s research into tea compounds is at a pre-clinical, experimental stage.

But he said: “There is definitely something interesting in the way these naturally occurring components of black tea may have a beneficial effect, both in terms of diabetes and our wider health.”