Those of us who drink green tea have sometimes felt left out of all the enthusiastic reports of benefits for coffee. While coffee racked up benefits against cancer, HBP, CVD, diabetes, ACM etc., green tea has in recent years been more often in the news for being debunked as showing any benefits for cancer, diabetes and so on.
Well, green tea lovers have finally scored one, and it’s an important benefit: the brain.
Japanese scientists looked at the consumption of green tea at various amounts and cerebral white matter lesions and hippocampal and total brain volumes. What’s more they compared it to coffee drinkers. And for once, green tea came out ahead:
Green tea consumption and cerebral white matter lesions in community-dwelling older adults without dementia
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41538-024-00364-w
Quote:
“Multivariable-adjusted analysis revealed significant correlations between fewer cerebral white matter lesions and higher green tea consumption, whereas no significant differences were found between green tea consumption and hippocampal or total brain volume. Regarding coffee consumption, no significant differences were observed in cerebral white matter lesions or hippocampal or total brain volumes. Hence, higher green tea consumption was associated with fewer cerebral white matter lesions, suggesting that it may be useful in preventing dementia.”
And then there are of those who are both green tea and coffee drinkers, hoping for benefits from both.
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A summary of this research:
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This feels like more of the art rather than science of longevity, but it’s all fun. Cold day and a tea ceremony, can’t hurt.
I should go back to drinking a cup of tea every now and then.
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I chose this option. One cup of black coffee and one of green tea per day 
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Green tea has not only EGCG, but also epicatechin (which is tested in ITP 2021 cohort). But GT has quite a bit lower content of epicatechin than what you find in cacao and GT also has lower bioavailability. But Green tea is ofc, just like coffee, a healthy choice.
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Yup, exactly what I do. Morning cup of coffee and early afternoon matcha green tea.
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I’ve been taking a EGCG extract for several years, wonder if that is as effective as the GT?
My approach is the black box paradigm. Inputs (intervention, drug) go into the black box, we don’t know what happens inside, but we can speculate (and that is all), and then we observe the outputs (outcomes). And if there are good outcomes, then I try to duplicate the inputs as closely as possible. The reason is simple – all too often we’ve seen supplements, vitamins or isolated molecules from food not have the same good effects (outcomes) as the food itself, because we speculate (wrongly) about what happens inside the box and what’s responsible for what. Instead, the black box approach acknowledges that our knowledge is incomplete and therefore if we want the outcomes, we must duplicate the inputs as closely as possible.
If a study shows benefits of green tea, I will drink green tea for the benefits (hopefully). An extract of anything from that tea is speculating that this is what is responsible for the effect – we don’t know the mechanism, cannot be certain – and we risk not getting the same outcome.
GT–>Black Box (body)–>healhier brain is not equal to GTE(Extract)–>Black Box–>??Brain??
Of course, I don’t know – maybe the extract is just as good. YMMV.