Do you choose a cup of
green tea over a cup of joe for your morning or afternoon pick-me-up? If so, you might be sipping an elixir of youth. Researchers from the Chinese University of Hong Kong found that the cells of regular tea drinkers have longer telomeres than their non-tea drinking counterparts. Thus, making them
biologically younger.
How does that work? Telomeres determine the aging and lifespan of cells. Each one can only divide so many times and it’s the telomeres job to ensure that the cell’s chromosomes don’t mutate or fuse with others. When a cell replicates, the telomeres shorten. No more telomere; cell death occurs. Science suggests that these replicating-mechanism regulators determine our biological age and that they’re susceptible to damage from oxidative stress.
After measuring the telomeres of 2,006 Chinese men and women over the age of 65, researchers concluded that the antioxidative properties of green and black teas and their constituent nutrients protect telomeres from the damage that occurs during the normal aging process — specifically, the oxidative stress that can occur from sun or pollution exposure. After finding that telomeres of people who drank an average of three cups of tea per day were about 4.6 kilobases more (the unit of length for DNA fragments equal to 1000 nucleotides) than those who drank an average of one-fourth of a cup a day. This length corresponds to approximately an additional five years of life, wrote researchers in the
British Journal of Nutrition.
The Anti-Aging Bottom Line: Swapping out coffee in favor of tea is a small change that can deliver big benefits. Though the effects of supplemental green tea extract were not examined in this study, volumes of research has demonstrated the broad-spectrum therapeutic benefits associated with supplementing with a standardized green tea extract. As an added bonus, taking green tea extract delivers the same antioxidants without the caffeine jitters or the trips to the bathroom.
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