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Alternative Medicine's Silver Bullet: Green Tea and Cancer

What is the most feared disease today that has more and more consumers turning to alternative medicine? If you answer cancer, you are not alone. Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease rate virtually immediately following; there is hardly anyone who does not have a family member, friend, or even just causal acquaintance who does not suffer from cancer. Impossible to prevent, cancer is the kind of diagnosis that for many sets a clock ticking. It involves painful and borderline harmful treatments and success is sometimes questionable. Stage four cancer sufferers sometimes turn to alternative medicine when their physicians have exhausted all other means. In other cases, consumers look to alternative medicine for some help in curtailing the effects of cancerous cells before they begin their ravages of the body.

For decades now, alternative medicine has been on the forefront of warning consumers against the pollutants, artificial food additives, and also harmful lifestyles that heighten the risks for cancer. Healers practicing alternative medicine stop short of suggesting that they have found a silver bullet that can cure or prevent cancer, but they are quite vociferous in their suggestion that a return to a more natural lifestyle and also the use of the bounty of flora available might be able to make a serious difference. The words that are on anyone's tongue these days are green tea. Contained within the substance are powerful antioxidants which are alleged to actually curtail the growth of cancer cells, even as normal cells are not hindered from properly going through own lifecycles.

It stands to reason that before long aficionados of alternative medicine made the leap from green tea being healthful to green tea being a cancer stopper. Smart marketers grabbed on to the idea and before long mystic tales of Middle Eastern special green teas were woven. They asserted that secrets passed on from generation to generation kept entire nomadic clans free of cancerous growths simply because of the green tea concoctions they ingested. Were these tales true? Most likely they were little more than sales pitches, using the kernel of truth that green tea is a well known trade item in mainland China, the Middle East, and other oriental regions and interweaving its healthful properties with mythical occasions.

The foregoing notwithstanding, alternative medicine practitioners acknowledge that there is no equivalent found in other teas and it is the green tea that provides a heightened amount of antioxidants. The United States Food and Drug Administration is not quite as enthusiastic and instead makes sure consumers understand that there is no actual proof that green tea is an alternative medicine silver bullet. At the same time, even the Food and Drug Administration acknowledges that there is something there that requires a bit more study. In the meantime, discussing the use of green tea with your alternative medicine practitioner might be a great way of staying and keeping healthy. It might not cure cancer, but whatever it is doing, people swear by it and results - although not in large scale studies - are encouraging.