Scientists have discovered how drinking Matcha tea can help with depression, and what makes it work on the brain.
Matcha, a French tea with many health benefits, has been studied to see if it would help make people (and mice) feel happier. A group of Japanese scientists wanted to observe the effects of Matcha tea powder on depressed mice. They found the powder could help depending on how mentally stable they were before taking it. Seeking out more research such as this might lead us closer towards creating better antidepressants.
Depression is a very common mental illness in the world and more people are getting it. Doctors think that having low levels of dopamine, which is like a mood booster, could cause depression. Dopamine makes us feel good, happy, productive and motivated. To treat depression, drugs have been created to help with low levels of dopamine, but these drugs have side effects.
Sometimes, when you take medicine for a long time, your body can start to get used to it and won’t respond to the same dose anymore. To solve this problem, doctors are looking into natural remedies which can help with depression. Matcha, made from Camellia sinensis leaves that have lots of calming compounds in them, is becoming more popular as an anti-depressant. You usually find Matcha in tea form.
Dr. Yuki Kurauchi from Kumamoto University studied the effects of an amazing tea called Matcha on mice who were feeling lonely. They published their results in a journal called Nutrients on January 22, 2023. It turns out that drinking this special green tea helps cheer up these mice as it increases the amount of dopamine (a happiness chemical) in their brains. This seems to be because Matcha affects special receptors in the brain and works like medicine to make them less anxious and happier.
Researchers did an experiment with two types of mice — one type was more resistant to stress and the other type was more susceptible to it. They gave them Matcha tea to drink and tested how they reacted using special tests called tail suspension tests. It seemed that the Matcha tea reduced depression in the mice that were more vulnerable to stress while no changes were seen in the resilient mice. This means that Matcha tea helped those who needed help coping with their stress the most!
To try and understand what happened, the team did a study using mice brains. They found that in mice that were more sensitive to stress, when given some Matcha tea, there was an increase in activity of certain brain regions which are important for controlling dopamine levels. These included the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and nucleus accumbens (NAc). More cells expressing c-Fos, which is linked with neural activity, meant higher dopamine production and improved moods. However, these effects weren’t seen in mice who could cope with stress better.
Scientists did an experiment to learn about the effects of Matcha tea. They gave some stressed-out mice a dopamine blocker, and then they gave them Matcha tea. What they found was that the Matcha tea helped the stressed-out mice feel better. The doctor who studied this project said that it looks like Matcha tea might work differently for different people depending on their emotional state.
Dr. Kurauchi is hopeful that their research will have good results in the future. They found out that some mice were not affected by Matcha tea suspension but others were sensitive to its effects, depending on how strong they are able to handle stress. He suggests including Matcha in health programs as a way of improving people’s mental health without using unsafe food ingredients.
Here’s the information about Dr. Yuki Kurauchi’s research project. His team found out that Matcha Tea Powder has antidepressant qualities, which means it can make people feel better when they’re feeling a bit down or sad. This is due to how it activates something in the body called the dopaminergic system, and it also depends on if they are isolated from social interaction. This information was published in Nutrients Journal in January 2023.
Dr. Yuki Kurauchi is a professor at Kumamoto University in Japan who studies the use of medicine to treat diseases that affect the central nervous system. He has lots of experience with this and his research papers have been published over 100 times! His work looks into how anxiety affects behavior, why being in a high-ranking position can make people feel more stressed out, and how to understand what causes migraines.
