Tea consumption and disease correlations

Abstract

Tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world next to water and is obtained from the leaves Camellia sinensis. In recent years, the potential health benefits and effect mechanisms of tea have attracted a lot of interest. The potential health benefits of tea have been attributed to its various phenolic compounds with unique biological properties found in tea. These phenolic compounds are especially catethins and their derivatives, which constitute at most 30\% of the dry weight of the tea. Tea is a new and effective strategy for reducing the severity of neurological diseases and for protecting against obesity, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer (ovaryum, lung, skin, breast, endometrial, prostate, bladder, oral and colorectal cancers). Overall, the study that supports the health benefits of tea is increasing. But, the amounts of and the frequency of tea consumption that is associated with potential health benefits vary greatly from work to work and this situation creates difficulty in determining the optimal consumption amount and frequency that tea can exhibit health benefits. For this reason, we aimed to examine the health effect of the tea and how much consumption is to investigate whether it meets the claimed health benefits. Within that frame, there is a need for more studies on the possible health effects of tea. While studying on that effect, the effects of various doses, forms (in synthetic or natural product matrix), exposure in different periods (short or long term) on health should be studied. However, currently the conducted studies are promising for tea is a bioactive component like polyphenol, theaflavins, thearubigins, caffeine and mineral. In addition, although the fact intake with diet proved to be reliable at the end of the conducted acute and chronic toxicity test is another positive part, safety of bioactive component in tea should be supported through further studies.