" Green tea has beneficial compounds called polyphenols, or catechins. Most of the research on green tea for breast cancer has been done in Asia because people there drink a lot of green tea."

"Green tea may help prevent breast cancer, based on one study in Asian women. Two population studies also found that Asian women with early-stage breast cancer (stages one and two) who drank three to five cups of green tea per day didn't have as many recurrences. The researchers didn't see these benefits for women with later-stage tumors."

"The problem, though, is that these are population studies. Remember that this type of research may find associations between green tea and cancer prevention, but it doesn't prove that green tea is the cause for the benefits we are seeing."

"On the other hand, there certainly are a lot of good reasons to suspect that green tea might be helpful for cancer. First of all, the polyphenols are great antioxidants. They can protect DNA against things such as free radicals that can damage it and lead to cancer. Also, a specific catechin known as EGCG may prevent new blood vessels from feeding the cancer, and help trigger tumor cells to self-destruct. One study even found that green tea may enhance the effect of a chemotherapy drug, Adriamycin, which is used to treat some types of breast cancer. So far, though, that last experiment has only been done on cells growing in a lab,
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