BY SANDRA GUY

Researchers are finding evidence that tea and tea extracts can have intriguing health benefits, ranging from lowered cholesterol levels to anti-cancer properties to boosting metabolism.

The results aren’t definitive, but some experts say they’ve seen plenty of anecdotal evidence.

“The uses [of herbal teas as remedies] are based on what I’d call traditional knowledge,” said Stefan Gafner, a pharmacist with a doctorate in natural product chemistry and the chief science officer at the American Botanical Council.

Gafner remembers his grandfather taking him on hikes in his native Switzerland where he would collect plants for specific remedies.

“People like my grandfather, who knew which herbs were used for which condition — that’s more the kind of evidence we have,” he said. “It’s based on hundreds of years of trial and error.”

The Swiss often use herbal tea to soothe colic in infants, and Americans are accustomed to drinking teas for upset stomach and colds and coughs.

Research on the website for the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health shows:

• One study concluded that “one possibility is that tea may inhibit cholesterol synthesis (formation) in the liver.”

“Both green tea and black tea extracts decreased cholesterol synthesis in rats’ liver cells — green tea by 55 percent and black tea by 78 percent,” the study said. “Both extracts appeared to cause this decrease by acting on enzymes involved in cholesterol synthesis.”

• Another study in mice found that antioxidants found in green tea may help repair DNA damage caused by sun exposure – a risk factor for developing skin cancer.
• White tea extract increased a specific type of cell death in laboratory cultures of two types of non-small cell lung cancer cells, indicating that the tea may have an anti-cancer effect, according to a study published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.
• And sarsaparilla, an herbal remedy used for thousands of years in Central and South America, has become known for helping relieve problems ranging from coughs to fluid retention to stomach bloating – but only if it is safrole-free. That’s because sassafras’ root bark contains safrole, a volatile oil that the FDA banned as a potential carcinogen decades ago.