[Kevin] (0:04 - 0:07)
Welcome back to Nutrition for Noobs. I'm Kevin.

[Michelle] (0:07 - 0:08)
I'm Michelle.

[Kevin] (0:08 - 1:21)
And this is the podcast where we look at nutrition and we break it down into the science behind it and we look at a lot of scientific studies, but we keep it simple because I'm a simple guy. So, in the last episode, we talked all about, well, Michelle talked about tea and the elements of tea and what tea is composed of and how it interacts with your body. And if you haven't heard that episode, I would recommend you go back and listen to it before you listen to this one, just because this episode will make a whole lot more sense with that background.

In fact, I'd go back and listen to our entire back catalog, but definitely the last episode. The last episode is the most important. And there was a cliffhanger of the last episode.

We left it on a cliffhanger because Michelle promised next week, same bad time, same bad channel. I just aged myself. Anyone under the age of 40 just didn't get that reference.

But we ended the last episode with Michelle promising some brand new hot off the press research from, I believe it was a conference you went to or something like that. I might be wrong.

[Michelle] (1:38 - 1:59)
of the research community and the scientific community on the links between tea consumption and human health outcomes. The first couple times I went, it was in Washington, D.C., and then the last one was online. So, because it was 2022.

[Kevin] (2:00 - 2:01)
Of course. Thank you, COVID.

[Michelle] (2:01 - 2:44)
Yeah. I think I actually really liked that delivery mechanism. I think it makes it much more accessible to a number of people.

But what I liked about it, sorry, was that it was academic scientific community. It was industry sponsored scientific community. And it was also integrative scientific community with no ties to industry.

So, it was basically everyone was there. Industry's there because like everybody's interested in green tea extract. What's green tea extract going to do, right?

But as well as the sort of the more natural health sort of side of things. So, everybody coming together to just sort of benefit advancing the science behind the benefits of tea and human health.

[Kevin] (2:45 - 3:15)
Okay. Excellent. Excellent.

And so, yeah, you promised at the end of the last episode that you'd talk a little bit more about now that we've got the foundations of tea and kind of what tea is. And I do remember you saying tea is a food. It's not just a drink.

You were going to talk about some of the health impacts of tea and how tea can help or assist with health related matters. So, I'll give it to you.

[Michelle] (3:15 - 3:40)
Yeah, sure. Yeah, because you know what? It's so cool to me that there's so much more here than people realize.

It's not just one of those things that you saw in an article. Oh, you should take this because it's going to help that like you saw it in like a clickbait. I think we talked about that last episode.

There's actual substance here.

[Kevin] (3:40 - 3:57)
And the very fact that they have an entire symposium around this gives it much more substantial weight and legitimacy with scientific minds there and all that then just some random clickbait of I drank whatever for a month and look what happened to me.

[Michelle] (3:57 - 4:25)
Yeah. And you know what? I think that's actually what the community is after because you can't advance towards even the ability to make a health claim without there being a significant body of evidence.

So, there has to be a large enough denominator of evidence in order to reach a level of statistical significance or weight for us to do that.

[Kevin] (4:25 - 4:30)
Yeah, you can't just have one random survey or something like that or one random study.

[Michelle] (4:55 - 5:46)
for a number of years. He's Professor Emeritus at the Friedman School of Nutrition, Science and Policy at Tufts University. And as I said, there are many, many other other scientific contributors involved in organizing this and certainly in chairing this symposium.

But I've had the opportunity to see Dr. Bloomberg not just speak at this symposium, but also I've seen him speak at World Tea Expo, which is the largest sort of trade show and educational conference for tea industry specifically. And, you know, he understands how science works, right? And, you know, in order for something to advance, it really hinges on legitimate scientific research and a significant body of evidence.

So, he knows the best way to advance this is to advance that first.

[Kevin] (5:47 - 5:47)
Right. Makes sense.

[Michelle] (5:47 - 6:00)
And is very committed to, I guess, shepherding and, you know, the way for this database, if you will. I don't know what he would call it, but that's what I call this database of literature to amass.

[Kevin] (6:01 - 6:14)
And I think what's important is there's a body of research more than just from, you know, tea company owners or something or a particular – Exactly. It's not twinings, you know, that's subsidizing all the research. It's neutral research.

[Michelle] (6:14 - 6:15)
Exactly.

[Kevin] (6:16 - 6:23)
And if there's one or two weird outlying studies, they get blended into the overall average, which tells a bigger story.

[Michelle] (6:24 - 6:34)
So, you might find that industry does pay for some of the research, but not all of it. And what's interesting is that it doesn't matter who paid for it, the research is still heading in the same direction, right?

[Kevin] (6:35 - 6:35)
Exactly.

[Michelle] (6:35 - 6:51)
So, I want to start, though, first with some World Health Organization data about health outcomes of our population. Okay. And tie that to why people should care about paying attention to this research.

[Kevin] (6:51 - 6:52)
Makes sense.

[Michelle] (6:52 - 7:23)
One of my first observations, Kevin, when I was, like, immersing myself in this as just sort of being a sponge, it really just affirms everything that I knew and believed about why nutrition was important. And that includes tea, is because the top causes of death globally are really linked to 80% or more risk factors that are modifiable behaviors. Things that we could actually take charge of and change and lessen our risk.

[Kevin] (7:23 - 7:25)
Oh, okay, things under our control, basically.

[Michelle] (7:25 - 7:29)
Things inside, yeah. So, there's only about 20% out of your control.

[Kevin] (7:29 - 7:32)
Right, which would be genetics and things like that.

[Michelle] (7:32 - 7:36)
Environmental exposures, yeah, genetics, things like that.

[Kevin] (7:36 - 7:42)
Well, but even that, even environmental exposure, hypothetically, I mean, there's financial issues, but you could move.

[Michelle] (7:43 - 7:44)
You can't, true.

[Kevin] (7:45 - 7:47)
Not everyone can afford to move, admittedly.

[Michelle] (7:47 - 8:21)
But we can't influence things like drift of pollution through air and acid rain and what comes out of your tap. I suppose unless you can, I think we've talked about that in the water episode, like there's increasingly better water filtration systems you can buy, but that's not accessible to everyone. So, things like that.

But in some cases, we know certain chronic diseases, the risk factors modifiable are 90%. Other diseases, genetics plays a larger role, for example, so it might be closer to 80%.

[Kevin] (8:21 - 8:24)
But it's a vast majority is kind of the bottom line.

[Michelle] (8:24 - 8:32)
Whether it's 10 or 20% that's outside of our control doesn't matter. The number that's inside our control is still very large, right?

[Kevin] (8:32 - 8:45)
I feel empowered, like it feels good to know that I have free will in this. It's not all determined at the moment I was born based on the genes that I got.

[Michelle] (8:45 - 9:52)
Yeah, so I'm going to just kind of run down the top causes of death globally, according to the WHO. And this is like huge data, and it's published, not necessarily every year, because I do go back fairly frequently and try to see if WHO has updated this. So, this is a slightly older statistic, 2015.

Close enough. But the top causes of death are heart disease related, and strokes, and we know strokes are very connected to heart disease, Alzheimer's and dementia, COPD, which, you know, is sort of lung related disorders, and cancers, and diabetes. But we know that the top cause of death globally would be heart diseases and strokes and things like that.

And then you can break down what's cool on WHO's website is you can break this down in a number of different ways, high income countries, low income countries, etc. And then you can break it down by country specifically.

[Kevin] (9:54 - 10:05)
I just have to say you're such a data nerd. If you think that this is the coolest part of the WHO website, that you can break it down. I love it.

I love it. That's why you're the scientist and I'm not.

[Michelle] (10:05 - 10:23)
Well, what we learned from that is that in lower income countries, those things like heart disease, stroke, cancers become lower on the top causes of death and they become more things that are related to lack of access to sanitation.

[Kevin] (10:24 - 10:25)
Okay, makes sense.

[Michelle] (10:26 - 10:43)
And things like that. They die of more infections, they have more infant mortalities and things like that. Whereas T.

Colin Campbell in the China study and all that work that he did that I've referenced a few times, he really refers to what kills more people in high income countries are what he calls diseases of affluence.

[Kevin] (10:44 - 10:45)
Right, right.

[Michelle] (10:45 - 10:52)
The result of us having almost overnutrition, but not of the good stuff. Right?

[Kevin] (10:52 - 11:20)
Well, it's a hierarchy of needs. I forget what it is, but it's a hierarchy of needs where once you have the basics, then you move up that hierarchy. And it makes sense that what will kill you, you know, we're no longer being eaten by lions and tigers and bears.

You know, we've moved up that hierarchy in certain areas of the world. And then it becomes more like processed food and things like that. That's going to kill us, you know, and lack of exercise and things like that.

[Michelle] (11:20 - 11:23)
And just as a like, this is a completely side anecdote.

[Kevin] (11:23 - 11:24)
We never do that.

[Michelle] (11:24 - 12:23)
But when it comes to tea, what I've learned from talking to tea growers and tea producing some of these tea producing countries or areas of them are some of the more low income origins. Right. And what I've learned from like just engaging in conversation with them, often tea is such an important staple in their day to day diet because it becomes so very accessible to them.

Whereas other avenues of good nutrition aren't as accessible to them. And they're actually really depending upon tea as part of their diet as a source of antioxidant protection, as a source of nutrition, which I find really interesting. So now just back to the WHO data for just one second, because, you know, cancer is up there in the top causes of death.

And what's interesting is when you flip it to Canada, we have the dubious honor of cancer being the number one cause of death and heart disease second.

[Kevin] (12:24 - 12:24)
Very dubious.

[Michelle] (12:25 - 13:44)
Versus in the United States to the south of us, heart disease is their number one leading cause of death and cancer would be secondary. So but so in Canada, heart disease is the second leading cause of death. But one in five Canadian adults will live with cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic respiratory disease or diabetes.

And then one in 25 Canadians age 20 or older will also suffer from mood and anxiety disorders and cognitive decline. And one in two Canadians are expected to get cancer in their lifetime. I remember, I remember being in either brownies or Girl Guides.

I was very young. And I remember we were, ironically, you're selling the cookies, right? You're selling the cookies to try to donate money to some good cause.

And we decided that year to sell to raise our cookie money or Girl Guide cookie money and give it to the Cancer Society. And I remember we were talking about the statistic when I was little of being one in four Canadians would be expected to get cancer in their lifetime. So that means in my lifetime, that has already doubled.

So that's concerning to me.

[Kevin] (13:44 - 13:45)
Of course, it's huge.

[Michelle] (13:45 - 14:10)
Because not only has that statistic doubled, but the population of Canada, the denominator has gone up exponentially. Because I think it was only like 4 billion people on the planet. And now we're up to like 7 billion, almost 8 billion people on the planet.

So not only has the denominator gotten larger, but the ratio has also gotten larger. That's concerning.

[Kevin] (14:10 - 15:26)
So it's, yeah, the incidence of these ailments have outstripped the increase in our population. So no, it's very concerning. And yeah, it's funny because just talking about cancer, like when I look around, it's sad.

But even in the last two or three years, I ran out of fingers. If I start counting up the people I know personally, like one degree of separation who have had some form of cancer or cancer scare or something like that. And, you know, unfortunately, like one or two people also like haven't been survivors of that and have passed away.

And, you know, I think back even to my parents' generation, and maybe my parents had very healthy friends. But far fewer, when they were my age, my impression at least is they had fewer, they talked about fewer friends of theirs who had cancers. Maybe they didn't talk about it around the kids.

I don't know. But it just strikes me that at my age, I have more friends who have had or have or continue to have cancer than even one generation ago.

[Michelle] (15:26 - 16:37)
Yeah, I would agree with that. And, you know, there is an aspect of more ability to diagnose and diagnose earlier. And that's definitely part of the reason why we hear more of it.

But I would still argue that our lived experience day to day is this is much more touching us much more than it than it than it did two or three generations ago. And the data proves that out. Right.

So there is more more prevalence of cancer. We are our risk has doubled of having cancer at some point in our lifetime. So the purpose of this, adding this to the podcast isn't to instill fear.

The purpose of this is to instill empowerment because that understanding that 80 percent modifiable risk factor goes to show you that four out of five Canadians has more one or more modifiable risk factors for chronic disease that it may include tobacco smoking, physical inactivity, unhealthy eating or harmful use of alcohol.

[Kevin] (16:37 - 16:38)
Right.

[Michelle] (16:38 - 20:13)
But, you know, it's it should be a positive thing for us to know that 80 percent of Canadians could greatly, very materially, very significantly reduce their risk if we improve our diet, we modify our alcohol intake. If we are a smoker, we quit smoking and we increase our physical activity. So consumption of fruits and vegetables, you know, greater than five times per day, or if you want to go to the recommendation, it's more like 10 to 15 servings per day.

And that can include tea. Believe it or not, because tea is a food and it is like one of the most powerful beverage tools that we have. It's easy for us to talk about how we could eat differently.

It's sometimes very hard to know, you know, if I'm if I'm not going to drink milk and I'm not going to drink concentrated juice and I'm not going to drink, you know, all of the other things. Like all of the things out there, commercial products, Red Bull, whatever. Like if I'm not going to drink those things that, you know, other people have maybe they've had a health claim or some industry influencer or some celebrity influencer has, you know, promoted it.

And then it has kind of a greenwashing attached to it. And you find out, oh, maybe that's not the best thing. What am I going to drink?

And so I think that becomes very relevant for me because we know the importance of water. The great thing about tea consumption is if it's if it's quality tea and we haven't done anything to it, meaning like, you know, it's not just about farming quality, although that's part of it. But if we haven't added a lot of sugar to it or or dairy to it, if we just drink it as a natural beverage, as as it was intended, it counts as water as well because it's 99 percent water.

All right. So what the what the symposium told us in 2022, some of the most significant, most recent scientific findings. I mean, we've known for quite some time several things.

And and the symposium just continues to infirm it time and time again. And let me just briefly list some of them. We've known that tea is very, very supportive.

Heart health has helped heart benefits, cardiovascular benefits. We know that it is very significant against cancer. In fact, I was doing presentations back in 2012, particularly out of Japan, that, you know, like they actually make can make a health claim in Japan about tea and cancer prevention and supportive against people who are living with cancer.

We don't have the ability to make that health claim in our part of the world yet. But we know even from the Angiogenesis Foundation, the work of Dr. William Lee and his organization have proven that tea is near the top of the list of anti-angiogenic substances, which we talked a little bit about angiogenesis, I think, in the last episode. So we know that it helps with cognitive function.

We talked about theanine in the last episode and why it's such a such a such a powerhouse. So there's so many things. So I want to touch on those.

And another like startling statistic, just to kick this off. Did you know to this day tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world next to water?

[Kevin] (20:13 - 20:26)
I think I did know that just because it is. I mean, in India and China, it's massively consumed. And those are the two most populous countries in the world.

So it kind of makes sense.

[Michelle] (20:26 - 21:08)
And in Russia, you know, and in, you know, South Asia, so many, so many countries. And, you know, it's interesting. And I learned this early on in our tea Somali training.

We think that one of the reasons why, you know, North America accepted it's the most widely consumed beverage in the world next to water, except in North America. We think that's because of the Boston Tea Party. Right.

And the fact that it, you know, that movement against taxation without representation, it wasn't the top. Tea wasn't the reason, but tea was the symbol of that protest. And it became unpatriotic to drink tea.

[Kevin] (21:08 - 21:16)
That makes sense. And probably just culturally, then people got out of the habit of drinking it and absorbed coffee instead.

[Michelle] (21:16 - 23:41)
So we think that that's happened. But even that being the case, Bloomberg and his companions pointed out at the symposium that still over almost 80 percent of American households do drink some tea. So it is, I think they kind of declared in the late 90s that there was a tea renaissance sort of happening in North America as the population at large, you know, started to consciously make shifts towards more healthier diet and lifestyles and more healthier consumption of foods and as well as beverages.

So, you know, as I kind of present this, it's important to point out, I think I mentioned this in the last episode, that a lot of people don't realize that black, green, yellow, oolong, poor, white teas all come from the same plant. Right. And there are there are two different main sort of main species that that we use to to grow and manufacture tea.

You know, the one that's more higher grown, one that's more lower grown, one that's a larger, smaller leaf, one that's a larger leaf. But there's still, you know, very close varietals, same species. So it doesn't.

This is what I take from that, Kevin. It doesn't really matter to me as long as it was quality tea. It doesn't really matter what kind of tea it became because it all comes from the same plant.

So it's going to have a similar chemistry. What's going to vary in chemistry is is going to be based on where it was grown and how it was grown in terms of elevation and the amount of sunlight and the amount of rainfall and the wind direction and the other other things that influence the terroir. So that takes a lot of anxiety away from me and it should take anxiety away from other people about focusing on one category of tea.

And Dr. Blumberg says this all the time. Just drink the tea that you like because then you will drink more of it. Don't worry as much about green versus black versus oolong.

And I think I've mentioned that before. Like, it's it's kind of not a useful question. How many antioxidants are in this one?

How many caffeines are in that one? But when it comes to scientific research, you do have to have a very specific hypothesis, right? Because if there's it's scientific inquiry tends to be more reductionist in nature.

So you do that. They are sometimes focusing on green tea or focusing on black tea or folks, you know, whatever.

[Kevin] (23:41 - 24:05)
And I think but and I think you said that there are and I think you said in the last episode there are some subtle differences based on the amount of oxidization that happens between, say, a white tea versus a black tea or green tea. But they're very subtle. And right.

And, you know, so so I guess scientifically there might be a measurable difference. But just for day to day.

[Michelle] (24:05 - 24:05)
Right.

[Kevin] (24:05 - 24:16)
Rubber hits the road reality living in the real world. It's not a big enough difference to really worry about too much. And as you say, as long as you're drinking something that brings you joy, then drink lots of it.

[Michelle] (24:16 - 27:53)
Exactly. So like you said, there will be differences among the types of tea that result based on varying degrees of processing and oxidation. But at the end of the day, all tea contains flavonoids, which are those naturally occurring compounds that have antioxidant properties and that they provide other bioactive compounds that help to neutralize free radicals, you know, reduce damage in the body and, you know, help us basically to prevent and in some cases make advances against chronic disease processes that may already be underway.

And it also contains that theanine, that special amino acid that is uniquely found in tea for the most part and crosses the blood brain barriers. OK, so I'm going to focus on the top line that they discussed at the last year's symposium, and it was cognitive function and cognitive decline, immune function, cardiovascular function and tea and cancer. And then and then we're going to wrap it up with some, you know, general dietary dietary guidelines involving tea.

OK, so cognitive function. So this was really cool. And it's OK with you.

I'm going to read sort of right from their summary, right from right from the key takeaways of those presentations. So the first one is they found evidence from randomized control trials that support the conclusion that tea consumption can produce short term acute beneficial effects on attention measured by objective tests, such as the attention switching tests on subjective reports of alertness. And the studies also consistently show beneficial effects of high doses of L-theanine, that beautiful amino acid, together with the low doses of caffeine on attention task performance.

So those findings from their studies indicate that caffeine and theanine, when consumed together, improve our attention. So if you caught that, they talk in there not just about attention, but our actual ability to do attention switching. So it's the second time I've seen them present research on that.

And the last time I saw them present research on that, it was really interesting because they did a test of coffee drinkers versus tea drinkers. And I believe it was a German study in the in the prior symposium five or six years earlier. And they found that the coffee drinkers took more breaks and had more difficulty with attention switching because of the way that I think the body metabolizes and deals with the caffeine versus versus the theanine giving you more of a slow, slow release and more modulated effect that the that the tea drinkers in that in that segmented study had took fewer breaks and handled attention switching tasks much better.

So their conclusion was, and it seems to be coming up again in the most recent symposium, you're more likely to be able to hold your attention, process cognitive information, handle attention switching tasks better if you choose to drink tea. And those effects were attributed to this very unique combination between caffeine and theanine and how they work together. I think I touched on that in the last podcast.

[Kevin] (27:54 - 27:54)
You did, yes.

[Michelle] (27:54 - 29:18)
If you remove one, the other one doesn't work as well. So this idea of decaffeinating sort of goes out the window, right? That's not really beneficial.

And they actually tested this in EEG studies. So this is coupled with increased alpha activity in the brain as measured by EEG or type of, you know, sort of brain activity monitoring and an improvement in sustained attention suggested that when you put all this together, it actually actually reduces stress effect. So it improves our ability to handle stress.

Also showed reducing cortisol response, which is linked to that stress response in humans. And they say attenuating cardiovascular responses. So basically helping us deal with stress in our day as we're doing, trying to perform these cognitive activities.

So specifically, they sum this up by saying there is good indicative evidence that tea and its constituents seem to be beneficial under any circumstances of stress. And the most profound cognitive domain seems to be that tea acts upon our attention and our alertness. So it can help us prevent burnout.

Isn't that nice?

[Kevin] (29:19 - 29:31)
So it is. It is. And clearly all those British grandmothers whose response to every single stress in life was, oh, come have a cuppa with me.

[Michelle] (29:31 - 29:31)
Right.

[Kevin] (29:32 - 29:34)
To calm yourself down actually makes sense.

[Michelle] (29:35 - 29:35)
It does.

[Kevin] (29:35 - 29:38)
We shouldn't be making fun of them as I'm doing right now.

[Michelle] (29:38 - 29:38)
Yeah.

[Kevin] (29:39 - 29:43)
We should be listening to those British grannies because they know that tea calms you down.

[Michelle] (29:43 - 29:59)
Yeah. So the tea and attention piece and cognitive enhancement piece, I already knew. What I didn't know is that the new research that kind of went along with this that they presented on in relation to cognitive decline, which is really, really exciting because you maybe remember from the dip.