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The Asian paradox - practical use of antioxidants

It is always interesting to see the results of a consistent use of antioxidants, even when that use is simply a part of someone’s culture. The French paradox is one of those situations where a cultural diet gives the benefits of a steady intake of antioxidants, and closely related to that is the Asian paradox.

Throughout Asia, a large percentage of the population smokes copiously. The cigarette is enjoying the same popularity as it did in the Western world in the fifties and sixties, before the harmful effects of tobacco smoke were widely known. In fact, some tobacco companies have most of their turnover in Asia.

On that basis, and knowing how harmful smoking is, we would expect to find that Asians suffer more from diseases related to smoking, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, than we do in the Western world.

That is not the case.

On the contrary, studies consistently show that the Asian population has a lower, in some cases much lower, incidence of many types of cancer and cardiovascular diseases. This is the Asian paradox.

The reason for the Asian paradox is not entirely clear, but we can get a major clue by looking at the diet of many Asians. One of the main differences between the Asian diet and what we mainly eat in the Western world is the Asian affinity for green tea. In many Asian countries, green tea is as much a staple of the diet as milk is in our part of the world. Many Asians drink several cups of green tea daily, and when we know that green tea is a major source of powerful antioxidants, the conclusion is near at hand.

The known effects of antioxidants includes helping to prevent both cancer and cardiovascular diseases. It seems logical that the high Asians intake of green tea is the explanation of the Asian paradox, as indeed the researchers behind the most widely published study conclude. Researchers at Yale University compared several hundred separate studies to come up with the conclusion that green tea is a major contributor to the low incidence of cancer in many Asian countries.

EGCG - the cancer fighter

The antioxidant named by the researchers is the polyphenol EGCG (epigallocatechin-gallate), one of the main antioxidants in green tea - and also one of the strongest antioxidants known. Green tea contains a lot of EGCG, as well as a number of other antioxidants, but EGCG may be the most intensely studied. Some researchers believe it may be the most effective cancer-fighting compound yet discovered.

As an interesting point, the Asian diet also consists of many soy products, and soy contains one of the most powerful anti-cancer antioxidants we know of, namely, genistein. This antioxidants is only found in soy products and may have very beneficial effects indeed.

Japan is one of the countries where the population enjoy green tea in copious amounts, and it is also a highly developed country with excellent medical statistics. These are a few interesting findings:

Japanese men have a much lower incidence of prostate cancer diagnoses. However, when Japanese men are given autopsies after death, it seems that they have the same incidence of prostate cancer as men in the West - it’s just that their tumors stay small and insignificant and don’t develop into full blown cancer.

Japanese woman rarely get breast cancer - the incidence is much lower than in the West.

It seems clear that the Asian diet, rich in antioxidants from green tea and soy, can work wonders in disease prevention.

Get the Asian paradox to work for you

If the green tea use in Asia can really make such a difference, imagine the effects if you drink green tea, but don’t smoke! The effects of the green tea are actually severely diminished in an individual who smokes, because the antioxidants are fully occupied limiting the harmful effects of the free radicals from the burning tobacco.

Even so, the effects are clear enough to stand up to scientific scrutiny. But what if you drink green tea or take green tea extract without smoking, thereby freeing the antioxidants up to work on neutralizing the other free radicals? The consequences for your health could be very positive indeed.

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