Tea as a treatment for attention deficit disorder? If the beverage’s other
health creds aren’t impressive enough—a host of studies have suggested
it shields against heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, and possibly some
cancers—now comes the news that it may also focus jumpy minds. “We have
reports going back thousands of years that drinking tea makes people
feel relaxed,” says John Foxe, a professor of neuroscience and an
expert on the mechanisms of attention at the City University of New
York. “But it also seems to make them more alert.”
The bulk of the research on tea till now has focused on the
antioxidants it contains, the flavonols, catechins, and lignans that
appear to arm the body against disease. It’s thought that they improve
blood vessel dilation, for example, and lower the risk of aortic
atherosclerosis. “We know that the more tea one consumes, the stronger
the cardiovascular protection will be,” says Lenore Arab, a nutritional
epidemiologist at the University of California-Los Angeles David Geffen
School of Medicine. By inhibiting damage to dna, some researchers
theorize, the antioxidants may also slow tumor growth.
Now neuroscientists are weighing in with evidence that components in the
leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant may work wonders in the brain as well.
According to Foxe’s research, the amino acid theanine, which is found in green, black, and
oolong teas, causes a decrease in the brain’s “alpha rhythms” when
people perform complex attention tasks, causing them to pay closer
attention. His ongoing research, funded by the food and beverage
conglomerate Unilever, suggests that theanine and caffeine together
improve performance more than either substance alone. The findings,
described in September at a conference on tea and human health, argue
for further studies specific to add, Foxe thinks.
Other brain studies are still in the very early stages but offer
hope that tea might battle degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and
Alzheimer’s, too. Silvia Mandel, vice director of the Eve Topf and the
National Parkinson Foundation Centers in Israel, has found that—in
mice, at least—tea’s main antioxidant shows an ability to curb brain
cell death and encourage neurons to repair themselves.
(Reporting By Matthew Shulman)
