A grand renaissance for the original energy drink…
 
Here's an interesting "news flash" item I ran across recently. I put the word in quotes because it's only truly news to those who haven't been reading my newsletter (or the Daily Dose) for a while now… 
 
Tea is REALLY GOOD FOR YOU!
 
Never mind that I've been singing the praises of the world's original caffeinated "energy drink" for years - both in terms of the cancer preventing benefits of caffeine and in the antioxidant power of the heart-healthy flavonoids in many varieties of tea. But some new research conducted by
the USDA (still government, but not nearly as corrupt as the FDA) indicates that consumption of the popular black tea may lower blood levels of low-density "bad" cholesterol by as much as 11%…
 
And without reducing desirable, heart-healthy HDL cholesterol at all!
 
What's even better "news" is that the study showed such dramatic benefits were apparent after ONLY 3 WEEKS. That's right - you don't have to be a lifelong tea drinker to experience this side-effect-free protection against heart disease. All you need to do is start drinking 4 to 5 cups of
black tea a day and in a few short weeks, your blood LDL levels are likely to be at least 7% lower (the average reduction amount among the study's subjects).
 
As if that's not enough reason to sail to China with an empty cargo ship, another body of recent research shows that varieties of green tea contain such powerful antioxidants that they may actually protect smokers against the free-radical damage that many scientists believe leads to cancer -by more than 30%!
 
Whether because of these continued findings indicating tea's health benefits or merely as a response to the fickle whims of fashion (or overpriced Starbucks' lattes), tea consumption in America has nearly tripled in the last 10 years…
 
But leave it to the good 'ol FDA to throw water on a bonfire of health. Read on… 

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The FDA stages its own version of the Boston Tea Party - in New York!
 
When the original Sons of Liberty followed Samuel Adams onto 3 British ships moored in Boston and stained the harbor brown by dumping 300-odd cases of tea into the frigid water in December of 1773, they did so to protest unfair regulation - specifically exorbitant taxes on tea…
 
And 230 years later, in another stunning example of unfair regulation of tea, the US Food and Drug Administration recently seized over $4000 worth of various teas from an herbal medicine shop in New York City.
 
The reason? Not avoidance of taxes. Not contamination. Not spoilage. Not even suspected drug smuggling. No, they seized these teas because - horror of horrors - the store was claiming that they might be GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH!
 
Yep, they marched in (in SWAT garb, no doubt) and confiscated case after case of perfectly good, health-nourishing tea of several different varieties because the store was claiming what USDA and other research has already concluded - that certain kinds of teas are, in fact, cancer-fighting. Or cholesterol-lowering. Or headache-curing. Or medicinal in some way…
 
Apparently, it's not legal to say things that are flattering to non-patented forms of medicine - even if the government said it first.
 
Now, either the USDA and the FDA simply aren't talking to one another (scary), or they're governed by a different set of laws than you or me or the Mom-and-Pop herbal medicine
shops (scarier)…
 
Neither one of these is my cup of tea.  How about you?      
 
Sipping to good health at my own "tea party,"
 
William Campbell Douglass II, MD