Green Tea may help prevent Alzheimer's Disease. A research team from Newcastle University in the united Kingdom recently concluded that consuming green tea on a regular basis may provide protection against Alzheimer's disease and other dementias.

"There are certain chemicals we know to be beneficial and we can identify foods which are rich in them, but what happens during the digestion process is crucial whether these foods are actually doing us any good," Ed Okello of Newcastle says in a news release.

In the case of green tea, the beneficial compounds are called polyphenols, which, when ingested, are broken down to produce a concoction of compounds. These are the compounds that researchers tested.

"What was really exciting about this study was that we found when green tea is degested by enzymes in the gut, the resulting chemicals are actually more effective against key triggers of Alzheimer's developement than the undigested form of the tea," Okello said. "In addition to this, we also found the digested compouds had anti cancer properties, significantly slowing down the growth of tumor cells which we were using in our experiments."

J. Finkel