Green Tea Antioxidant – How Tunneling Fox Out Free Radicals

Scientists have used quantum mechanics to work out why green tea is good for you. The health benefits of the brew are all down to a quirk of the quantum world known as tunneling, they say.

Àngels González-Lafont and colleagues at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain have modeled the chemical reaction that allows green tea catechins to zap free radicals.

The reaction involves the catechins losing a hydrogen atom to a reactive free radical. The scientists found that in this process the radical and catechins were bound together tightly, leading to very small energy changes as the reaction proceeds.

Tunneling makes the hydrogen transfer much faster than the free radical’s reaction with the body’s vulnerable lipids so the radicals are trapped before they can do harm.

‘It’s really astounding what this [research] has done for the rest of us,’ said Vinson. ‘We had a problem understanding how polyphenols work at such low concentrations.’

‘This paper gives theoretical credence to a large amount of experimental evidence of polyphenols as in vitro and in vivo antioxidants.’

Benefits of Drinking Green Tea Source:
Green Tea Antioxidant’s Tunneling Secret