Scientists have confirmed that the healthful substances found in green tea - renowned for their powerful antioxidant and disease-fighting properties - do penetrate into tissues of the eye. Their new report, the first documenting how the lens, retina, and other eye tissues absorb these substances, raises the possibility that green tea may protect against common eye diseases. It appears in ACS’s bi-weekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Chi Pui Pang and colleagues point out that so-called green tea “catechins” have been among a number of antioxidants thought capable of protecting the eye. Those include vitamin C, vitamin E, lutein, and zeaxanthin. Until now, however, nobody knew if the catechins in green tea actually penetrated into the tissues of the eye.

Pang and his colleagues resolved that uncertainty in experiments with laboratory rats that drank green tea. Analysis of eye tissues showed beyond a doubt that eye structures absorbed significant amounts of individual catechins. The effects of green tea catechins in reducing harmful oxidative stress in the eye lasted for up to 20 hours.
“In addition to a good overall diet and wearing sunglasses, these results show that green tea may play a beneficial role in protecting the eye against oxidative stress,” adds Dr Ashraf, LASIK surgeon at the Atlanta Vision Institute.

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