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The health benefits offered by green tea are remarkable. A new study shows that green tea can protect heart arteries by keeping them flexible and relaxed, and therefore better able to withstand the ups and downs of constant changes in blood pressure. Researchers have found that among 14 subjects, those who drank green tea showed greater dilation of their heart arteries on ultrasound 30 min. later than those drinking either diluted caffeine or hot water. That's because, the scientists speculate, green tea works on the lining of blood vessels, helping cells there to secrete the substances needed to relax the vessels and allow blood to flow more freely. It's the flavonoids in the tea, which work as antioxidants and help prevent inflammation in body tissue, that keep the vessels pliable. These substances may also protect against the formation of clots, which are the primary cause of heart attacks.

All it took, says the researchers, was 6 g of green tea, which amounts to 3 to 4 cups. To make sure the dilation effect was not due to the small amounts of caffeine found in green tea, the group compared the arterial sizes in the green-tea drinkers with those consuming a diluted caffeine beverage and found no change in arterial size in the caffeine drinkers. Even more intriguing, the beneficial effect seems to be long-lasting and cumulative. When the doctors measured the green-tea drinkers' arteries two weeks after daily consumption of the beverage, they found that their vessels were more dilated than they had been at the beginning of the study.

But experts caution that one study isn't enough to catapult green tea to wonder-drink status. Green-tea consumption may have beneficial effects on the arteries, but we should stop short of translating that into a recommendation that everybody should be drinking green tea because it's been proven to reduce heart attacks and strokes.

Even though green tea has not been officially recommended as the beverage of choice by cardiovascular surgeons, there are scientific benefits to GO Green!