The health effects of tea polyphenols and their antioxidant mechanism

Abstract

There are thousands year of history for drinking tea in China and world. The benefits of drinking tea to human health are well known and improved by epidemiological result and experiments. The most effective components in tea are polyphenols which are about 30% weight of dry tea. The antitumor and antimutagenic effects of the tea polyphenols, the prevent effect of the tea polyphenols on Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, the protective effects of the tea polyphenols on neuron against lead toxicity and their antioxidant mechanisms are reviewed and discussed in this paper.