How Green Tea and CLL Work Together

Green tea and CLL (Chronic Lyphocytic Leukemia) seem to be in the medical news a lot lately. Recently the Mayo clinic did some research and found that 3 of the patients in the study who had chronic lymphocytic leukemia did somewhat improve whenever they drank green tea. This was either drank by itself or the patients had taken nutritional supplements of green tea extract. Either way, there is a strong link between green tea and CLL that must be taken into consideration.

The Link Between Green Tea And CLL

How did green tea help those people who are suffering from chronic lymphocytic leukemia? Well, green tea and CLL worked together to decrease blood counts, which is something that is very important whenever you are dealing with chronic lymphocytic leukemia because the white blood cells tend to get out of control and thus cause this disease. This was discovered and documented through CT scans and blood counts.

Of course, as with any other research that is done, there is a potential risk for bias. Here, the potential sources of bias include the fact that this same research group has actually worked together in the past to publish various other studies about green tea. So, some people tend to think that this group is more than likely trying to collect enough evidence that green tea and CLL can work together so that they can actually receive funding for a much larger trial.

The other reason why some people are truly questioning this research is because, while it is uncommon, spontaneous temporary improvements in CLL do occur. As such, those people who doubt the connection between green tea and CLL tend to think that there is not very strong evidence that these 2 things will work together. This is especially true since neither of these research studies were blinded or compared to a placebo control, which makes it only anecdotal information at this point.

However, a lot of good clinical studies do start with anecdotes and case presentations. So, when you ignore these things you will find that there is definitely a good case for some early stage trials here. However, these early trials are very difficult because nutritional supplements are unregulated, which means that the amount of the active ingredient within the supplement can vary greatly. With this information in mind, the link between green tea and CLL definitely warrants further investigation but you should not start taking green tea pills just yet.