When it comes to a healthy approach to lifestyle and diet, there are certain foods and drinks that crop up time and time again – green tea being one of them.
Great for the metabolism and filled with antioxidants, health experts have always praised the many and varied benefits of green tea.
However, new research carried out in the States has suggested that green tea could actually be detrimental to your fertility.
The research, carried out by a team from the University of California-Irvine, found that drinking green tea in copious amounts may adversely affect your reproductive system.
The team carried out a series of experiments on fruit-flies, and the results have been deemed significant enough to warrant more intensive studies.
As part of the experiments, the flies were exposed to various doses of green tea polyphenols. The team found that, after 10 milligrams of green tea, female offspring exhibited slower development and endured a significant decrease in lifespan.
A dose of 10 milligrams of green tea was also found to result in abnormalities in the male and female reproductive organs.
Commenting on the findings, Prof Mahteb Jafari said: “While green tea could have health benefits at low doses, our study and others have shown that at high doses, it may have adverse effects.”
It is expected that the research report, published in the Journal of Functional Foods, will result in further studies to figure out the exact impact of the findings on humans.
