I have been giving Mom buckets of green tea since we first found out she was HER2+. It's nice to be able to get somebody to drinks lots of water, but they won't always do it. The bottled teas are total garbage from what I have seen. They are all sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, are generally watered down. You hold them up to the light, and can barely see any tea coloring to them.
Another advantage to the homebrewed, is that you can adjust your sweetening level/method to meet your own tastes. I began adding the orange zest to get some added d-limonene into Mom, as there was not that much available (10mg) in each Life Extension brand 100mg CoQ-10 capsule I was giving her. However, you may not have noticed that Life Extension has released a high concentration version (1000mg) of d-limonene by itself, that is offered as a treatment for severe GERD. I now use one of those each day as an added source of d-limonene for Mom. Additionally, a friend who has had GERD for years, has tried this new product, and has completely stopped taking his Rx drugs for the same problem. He swears by the d-limonene.
Many people do not find green tea to their liking, but if you add a few fresh cloves to the orange zest as well, it starts to roughly approach the flavor of Constant Comment tea, which many people enjoy.
Epigallocatechin-3-gallate inhibits activation of HER-2/neu and downstream signaling pathways in human head and neck and breast carcinoma cells.
Masuda M,
Suzui M,
Lim JT,
Weinstein IB.
Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, New York 10032, USA.
Overexpression of the HER-2/neu receptor (HER-2) is associated with a poor prognosis in patients with breast carcinoma and also in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). In a previous study on HNSCC cell lines, we found that epigalocathechin-3-gallate (EGCG), a major biologically active component of green tea, inhibited activation of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and thereby inhibited EGFR-related downstream signaling pathways in HNSCC cells. In the present study, we examined the effects of EGCG on activation of the HER-2 receptor in human HNSCC and breast carcinoma cell lines that display constitutive activation of HER-2. Treatment of these cells with 10 or 30 microg of EGCG, respectively, doses that cause 50% inhibition of growth, markedly inhibited the phosphorylation of HER-2 in both cell lines. This was associated with inhibition of Stat3 activation, inhibition of c-fos and cyclin D1 promoter activity, and decreased cellular levels of the cyclin D1 and Bcl-XL proteins. Although these concentrations of EGCG are quite high, we found that concentrations of 0.1-1.0 microg/ml, which are in the range of plasma concentrations after administering a single oral dose of EGCG or a green tea extract, markedly enhanced the sensitivity of both types of cell lines to growth inhibition by Taxol, a drug frequently used in the treatment of breast carcinoma and HNSCC. These results, taken together with previous evidence that EGCG also inhibits activation of the EGFR in carcinoma cells, suggest that EGCG may be useful in treating cases of breast carcinoma and HNSCC in which activation of the EGFR and/or HER-2 plays important roles in tumor survival and growth.
Here's another link:
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cg.../full/62/3/652
Here's some d-limonene info:
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cg.../full/62/3/652
Cheers,
Tom