Go Green Tea

I write today in support of tea power; specifically the healing power of green tea.

I usually start the day with two cups of regular hot tea (Red Rose, Lipton, Tetley) and then sometimes will have another in the afternoon at work.  I'm not a coffee drinker and haven't been since I stopped smoking decades ago.  I like the way coffee smells but it has to have a lot of hot milk and turn into a cappuccino before I will drink it.  Coffee ice cream is also very delicious but that's another post.

Earlier in the week, I wrote about a book I have been reading, "Anti-Cancer: A New Way of Life," by David Servan-Schreiber, MD, Ph.D., which has made me look at my diet differently and make small changes based on the medical and scientific information in this book.  One piece of information revealed in this book is that green tea contains antioxidants, which is great news, and if I drink two to three cups of green tea a day I will be boosting my immune system in a major and beneficial way.

Doctors have been saying for a long time that the single best way to stay healthy is to strengthen your immune system.  As I get older, I am trying to do what I can to stay as healthy as possible and a strong immune system aggressively fights diseases ranging from common colds to arthritis and cancer.

Enter the drinking of more green tea on a daily basis.  It's a small change but I feel it all contributes to a positive health picture because good nutrition affects all areas of your life. Until I read this book, I had no idea that green tea contains a substance that the whole pharmaceutical industry today is researching in order to manufacture it: catechins.  (This part is going to get a little scientific but if I don't include this information you might not be persuaded about the healthy effects of drinking green tea.) 

Basically, catechins go through your body searching for free radicals that can damage DNA and contribute to cancer and atherosclerosis.  One of these catechins, epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG, is "one of the most powerful nutritional molecules against the formation of new blood vessels by cancerous cells," writes Servan-Schreiber.

After two or three cups of green tea, ECGC is in your blood and spreading through your body by using your capillary vessels.  According to Servan-Schreiber, "ECEG settles on the surface of each cell and blocks the switches (the "receptors") whose function is to set off the signal that allows the penetration of neighboring tissue by foreign cells, such as cancer cells"

Is that cool or what?

I don't expect that green tea is going to make up for the years of bad processed food that I used to eat without thinking of the health consequences but we all have to start from where we are and today's goal is to get strong and stay healthy.

Vulnerability

Photo by Lee Gant

Four people I know very well are bravely fighting cancer.  Currently, each person has a different kind of cancer and each person is in a different stage of treatment.  Through them, I have become more intimately aware of fighting this horrendous disease and I have learned a tremendous amount about developing resilience from them.  

Two of the four people recommended a book to me, "Anti-Cancer A New Way of Life," by David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PhD.  Servan-Schreiber is a scientist and a doctor who was diagnosed with brain cancer seventeen years ago and is currently in remission.  Before I opened the book, I was grabbed by the following fact printed on the book's cover: "All of us have cancer cells in our bodies.  But not all of us will develop cancer."  It blew me away to think that we are all walking around with cancer cells inside of us that could be waiting for some sort of a trigger.  Talk about refocusing your health priorities!

I am not a cancer patient but I don't need to be diagnosed to restructure my diet or pursue smarter ways of managing stress and achieving a more relaxed approach to life.  Servan-Schreiber's book is empowering.  It is chock full of nutritional and medical information and I have started incorporating small changes in an effort to be preventative.  Not that every meal has to be a series of conscious health choices but knowing that sugar contributes to cancer sometimes helps to make chocolate less appealing to me.  Notice I said sometimes.

The best parts of the book to me are Servan-Schreiber's intimate insights into himself, the power of friendship and the "music of life."  Feelings of helplessness and isolation can delay healing and block our immune systems from becoming stronger; a network of close friends or family can motivate us to fight and survive an illness.  I believe we are here to help each other but there is no getting around those times of crystal clear clarity when you know it's you and you alone left to face a disease or a loss.  That's when trust and mental toughness kick in.

Forced to confront an initial diagnosis of cancer and then a relapse, here is Servan-Schreiber revealing his vulnerability:

"I remember having one of those fleeting incidents, the kind that lead us to sense the frailty of life and the miracle of our connection to our fellow mortals.  It was a tiny thing -- a brief encounter in a parking lot on the eve of my first operation.  From the outside it would seem trifling, but to me it took on a particular significance.

Anna and I had driven to New York, and I'd parked in the hospital lot.  I was standing there, breathing the fresh air during those final few minutes of freedom before admission, tests, and the operating room.  I noticed an elderly woman who was obviously on her way home after a hospital stay.  She was alone, carrying a bag and walking with crutches.  Unaided, she couldn't manage to get into her car.  I stared at her, surprised that they had let her leave in that state.  She noticed me, and I saw in her look that she wasn't expecting anything of me.  Nothing.  We were in New York, after all, where it's everyone for himself.  I felt drawn toward her by a surprising momentum that sprang from my situation as a fellow patient.

This wasn't compassion, it was a gut feeling of fraternity.  I felt close to this woman, made of the same fabric as this person who needed help and wasn't asking for any.  I put her bag in the trunk, backed her car out of its space, then helped her while she settled into the driver's seat.  I shut her door with a smile.  For those few minutes, she hadn't been alone.  I was happy to perform this tiny service.  In fact, she was the one who did me a favor by needing me exactly at that instant. 

It gave me a chance to feel that we were part of the same human condition.  We made that gift to each other.  I can still see her eyes, in which I had awakened a sort of confidence in others, a sense that life could be trusted if it put in her path -- as it just had -- the help she needed when she needed it.  We hardly spoke to each other, but I am sure she shared with me the sense of a precious connection.  That encounter warmed my heart.  We, the vulnerable, could help each other and smile. 

I went into surgery in peace."