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Tea and Alzheimer's - A bit of hope, a lot of hype
(September 2005)

The headlines blared "tea could hold back Alzheimer's", "drinking tea sharpens your memory, may prevent Alzheimer's".

Those are pretty heady headlines. What are they based on? Actually, they are based on preliminary laboratory studies published in a relatively obscure journal showing that green or black tea extracts can inhibit two enzymes thought to play a role in Alzheimer's disease. That's it. There are no animal studies, no evidence in humans that tea or tea extracts actually improve or prevent Alzheimer's.

These test tube studies are of interest, but it is a long way, a very long way, from test tube results that are encouraging (even exciting) to showing they actually work in people and well over 90 percent of substances that look good in the test tube never develop into agents beneficial for the prevention or treatment of human diseases.

So, this is a lot of hype - but, the result will be:

1.A lot of people drinking a lot of tea in the belief it may help their memories or prevent Alzheimer's.

2.Relatives and care givers giving Alzheimer patients gobs of tea in the assumption the tea can improve the Alzheimer's.

3.Entrepreneurs selling all sorts of tea extracts with suggestions that the extracts will improve memory and prevent memory loss, and implications that the extracts will prevent or treat Alzheimer's.

The bottom line is that we have no documented way of preventing Alzheimer's and the only drugs we have available to treat Alzheimer's provide only very modest improvement or slowing of the progression of this terrible disease.

Okello, E.J., et al. In vitro anti-secretase and dual anti-cholinesterase activities of Camellia sinensis (tea) relevant to treatment of dementia. Phytotherapy Research. Vol 18. Pgs 624-627. 2004.