Is Green Tea a brain booster?

Is green tea a brain booster?

We know the drill: reset the alarm until you absolutely have to get up, boil kettle, make the tea… and from that first sip you instantly feel more awake.

So is that routine? Or just placebo? Apparently not….according to a piece we have found on the NHS website a study was completed in 2012.

The study analysed 12 healthy male volunteers aged 21 to 28. The men were first given test drinks, then asked to perform tasks known t

o use working memory. Their whole brains were scanned, but the researchers also focused in on a specific area of the brain they were interested in, called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a key area that mediates working memory processing.

The first of the two drinks was a carbonated milk-whey based soft drink known as variety “C” which acted as a control drink.

The second variety “G” was very similar to C but also contained green tea extract. Volunteers were given either 250ml or 500ml of the drinks via a feeding tube directly into their stomach (the 250ml amounts were diluted to 500ml so the participants couldn’t guess their treatment). The two amounts were used to see if there were any dose-related effects. Each man received all the drinks in the same doses.

Both the men and those administering the drink were blinded to the treatment allocation (ooohhh serious stuff!)

Shortly after being given the drink, the brain activity of the volunteers was scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), while the volunteers performed a working memory task. fMRI measures tiny blood flow changes in the brain that are related to its activity.

The researchers concluded that their results “suggest that green tea extract may modulate brain activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a key area that mediates working memory processing in the human brain”.

The NHS website then goes on to mention that the study was too small to show a true differentiation between the two groups…BUT it does show that green tea extract might affect activation in the specific area of the brain involved in working memory (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex).

That is enough for us really… green tea may modulate our brain and help memory…AND its great for our teeth…and even more importantly, its yummy!

The Qi Teas Team x