It turns out that green tea just might have have the ability to cure Alzheimer’s disease. One of the ingredients in green tea, Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) apparently reduced the amount of beta-amyloid plaque by 60% in the test subjects when combined with a red laser light.
Thinking Voodoo therapy? Well, apparently a research team headed by Andrei Sommer at the University of Ulm in Germany showed that red lasers when applied to the brain drove water out of the cells. And if they could get chemicals into the blood stream near these cells, the water-starved cells would suck it back into themselves. (As an aside, it is notoriously difficult to get chemicals into brain cells – a self-defense mechanism we seem to have)
So when the compounds in green tea were taken orally and the red laser applied, the research team found the 60% decrease.
Red laser treatment alone reduced the plaque by 20%.
What isn’t clear (but heavily claimed by health food proponents) is whether there is any cure for Alzheimer’s using green tea without laser treatment. Or whether there’s any effect at all.
The jury is still out on this one folks but hey, green tea is good stuff and it doesn’t hurt you. This one falls into the “I don’t know but it can’t hurt me so let’s all drink it” category.