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Green tea controls high blood pressure.
Green tea controls high blood pressure High blood pressure places a serious
burden on the vascular system and contributes to atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis
will in turn precipitate heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular
diseases. The cause of high blood pressure is not yet fully understood,
but it is clear that a chemical called angiotensin II plays a role in high
blood pressure due to essential hypertension and to arterial stenosis of
the kidneys. Blood contains the substance angiotensinogen which is transformed
to angiotensin I unde action of the enzyme renin in the kidneys. Another
enzyme called th "Angiotensin Converting Enzymen (ACE) then changes
angiotensin I t angiotensin II, which is an extremely strong vascular constrictor.
It is th onstriction of the blood vessels caused by this constrictor that
leads to high blood pressure.
Dr. Hara has shown that green tea catechin impedes the action of ACE and
suppresses production of angiotensin II. He has also demonstrated that
administration of catechin to Spontaneously Hypertensive Rat (SHR) could
limit increases in the rats' blood pressure. SHR are rats used as models
for human high blood pressure experiments, and their blood pressure at
the start of the experiment (when they were five weeks old) was 130 140mmHg.
By the age of about 10 weeks, after a diet of normal feed, their blood
pressure had risen to more than 200mmHg. But the blood pressure those rats
raised with U.5Y5 catechin added to their teed remained belo of those rats
raised with 0.5% catechin added to their feed remained below 2OOmmHg. Exchanging
the feed of the two rat groups at 16 weeks of age led to a reversal in
blood pressure between the two groups. These results indicate that green
tea catechin has the ability to prevent a rise in blood pressure. If the
amount of catechin used in this experiment is converted to the amount of
green tea normally drunk by humans, it is equivalent to drinking about
10 moderately large cups of tea per day.
These are surely quite significant results in suggesting, as they do. that
the daily consumption of green tea can prevent high blood pressure.
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