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Can Green Tea Lower Bad Cholesterol? Cholesterol is a substance that we needs to keep us healthy. Human body produces about 75 percent of the blood cholesterol required and the remaining 25 percent comes from the foods we eat. Cholesterol can only be found in animal products. People always think that high cholesterol is bad for our health but this is only partially right. It all depends on what type of cholesterol: good or bad! The good cholesterol is called high-density lipoproteins (HDL) and the bad one is named low-lipoproteins (LDL). HDL helps prevent the LDL from getting into the artery walls. Too much LDL can slowly build up in the inner wall of the arteries that feed the heart and brain. Plaques can eventually be formed to narrow the arteries and make them less flexible. This condition is known as atherosclerosis. If a clot forms and blocks a narrow artery, a heart attack (when the blockage is in the heart) or stroke (when the blockage is in the brain) can happen. In order to prevent heart disease and stroke, a person should have a higher level of HDL and a lower level of LDL. Low levels of HDL (less than 40 mg/dL for men and less than 50 mg/dL for women) have been shown to increase the risk of heart disease. The risk of coronary heart disease and stroke rises with higher level of LDL, and increases even more in the presence of other risk factors like high blood pressure and smoking.
The cholesterol level in human body can be affected by age, gender, family health history and especially diet. Fish, omega-3 fatty acids, oatmeal, oat bran, most kinds of nut and high-fiber foods were found to be able to lower LDL level. Green tea, which originates in China, has been used as a beverage and a method of traditional medicine in most Asian countries to help everything from controlling bleeding to promoting digestion. It has recently become more widespread in the West. Many research have been carried out to determine its health benefits ranging from lowering blood pressure to preventing cancer because of the rich amount of antioxidants and polyphenols it has. Lately, researchers from Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California found that green tea, taken in a capsule or drunk in a cup, might reduce bad cholesterol level. The findings, which were published in the November 2011’s issue of the ‘Journal of the American Dietetic Association’, showed that green tea could lower 5 to 6 points more from people's total cholesterol and LDL levels. After searching all the recognized databases up to March 2010, results of 20 clinical trials involving a total of 1,415 adults were gathered. All these trials examined the relationship between consumption of green tea catechins and changes in levels of total, LDL, HDL and triglycerides. All the participants were randomly assigned to either consume green tea daily (as a beverage or capsule), or be part of the control groups, which took placebo capsules, drank ! low-catechin tea or downed water. The green tea capsules contained green-tea compounds known as catechins that are supposed to lower cholesterol absorption in the gut. Each trial lasted between 3 and 24 weeks and it seemed that the benefits were limited to people who already had high cholesterol when they entered the study. While green tea in a cup was found to be more consistently effective than capsules, the differences were fairly small. M Meanwhile, green tea catechins did not alter HDL or triglyceride (another type of blood fat) levels. The findings, however, could not show what dose of green tea catechins is ideal. Researchers felt that it is necessary to have further studies comparing different forms of green tea so as to show which ones work more effectively. Patients already taking cholesterol-lowering drug were urged to stick to the medication and not to switch to green tea, either as capsules or as a beverage. But researchers believed that adding green tea to the diet could further improve cholesterol numbers.
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