Green Tea for Sleep Apnea Effects

If you suffer from the effects of obstructive sleep apnea, it might be a good idea to add a cup of green tea to your daily diet. Our source reports on an article in this month’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine about a study done on rats that might lead to more good things coming from green tea.

If you have obstructive sleep apnea, your airway becomes obstructed throughout the night meaning you don’t get enough oxygen. This leads to all kinds of bad things like high blood pressure, strokes and problems with learning and memory among others.

In the study, researchers deprived rats of oxygen intermittently throughout their night cycle for two weeks. Half the rats were given water with green tea polyphenols and the other half just plain water. Then they were put to the maze, in this case a water maze, with a hidden escape platform that they had to remember the location of so they could get out.

The green tea polyphenol rats did better at getting out of the maze than the plain water rats. There was also some indication of less oxidative stress in the green tea rats. The green tea rats also “displayed significantly greater spatial bias for the previous hidden platform position.”

Of course this is by no means the end of the research and who knows what further testing will show. But with all the good things to be found in tea and coming from drinking it, it sure doesn’t hurt to add a cup of green tea to your daily beverages.

Sources: http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/sleep-apnea/news/20080516/green-tea-puts-sleep-apnea-woes-to-bed

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/22/AR2008052202014.html