Green Tea Protect Brain Against Natural Aging

by Julian
(Bromley)

Individuals who drank tea four times a week for about 25 years had more efficient brain function.

The findings, published in the scientific journal Aging, found that participants who consumed either green, oolong or black tea at least four times a week for about 25 years had brain regions that were “interconnected in a more efficient way” than those who did not drink tea.

“Our results offer the first evidence of positive contribution of tea drinking to brain structure, and suggest that drinking tea regularly has a protective effect against age-related decline in brain organisation” said Feng Lei, team leader and assistant professor in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

To further explain the importance of functioning brain regions, Dr Feng compared brain functionality to road traffic efficiency.

“Take the analogy of road traffic as an example,” he said. “Consider brain regions as destinations, while the connections between brain regions are roads. When a road system is better organised, the movement of vehicles and passengers is more efficient and uses less resources.

“Similarly, when the connections between brain regions are more structured, information processing can be performed more efficiently.”

Dr Feng, who has previously published findings on the links between tea consumption and overall human health, added: “Our current results relating to brain network indirectly support our previous findings by showing that the positive effects of regular tea drinking are the result of improved brain organisation brought about by preventing disruption to interregional connections."

In the future, the team of researchers plans to examine the effects that tea, and bioactive compounds found in tea, have on cognitive decline.

Source: Junhua Li, Rafael Romero-Garcia, John Suckling, Lei Fengcorresponding (2019). Habitual tea drinking modulates brain efficiency: evidence from brain connectivity evaluation. Aging (Albany NY). 2019 Jun 15; 11(11): 3876–3890. Published online 2019 Jun 14.