Does Green Tea Lower Your Cancer Risk?
Green tea is native to China and India and has been consumed for centuries throughout the world. It is chock full of antioxidants and other substances and may be one of the planet’s healthiest beverages. I recently came across an article lauding the anti-cancer properties of green tea.
We begin with breast cancer. One comprehensive review included 5,617 enrolled in two studies of breast cancer recurrence and seven studies of breast cancer incidence. Those who consumed the most tea had a drop of up to nearly one-third in the risk of getting breast cancer. Promising, but not high-level evidence, given the observational nature of the study.
What about other cancers? A comprehensive review of 29 studies discovered that those who consumed green tea had a 42 percent lower risk of developing colorectal cancer. However, the benefit seemed to accrue only to patients with rectal cancer and to females.
A separate population-based prospective study found regular consumption of green tea to be inversely associated with colorectal cancer risk, particularly among women who maintained the tea-drinking habit over time.
The longer the duration of tea consumption over one’s life, the lower the risk of colorectal cancer appears to be. Risk also drops as the amount of tea consumed rises. The investigators conducted the research prospectively and tried to adjust for a wide range of confounding factors (including socioeconomic status). This Shanghai study of women consumers of green tea represents some of the best evidence I could find.
That’s the good news. The bad? An observational study cannot measure tea intake amount with any degree of high confidence. Therefore, the study does not represent high-level evidence.
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