Go green for your prostate!

I am a self confessed tea addict. I have been for as long as I can remember and it will be a cold day in hell before I go more than about an hour and half without a brew. However, over the last six months the previously unthinkable has happened; as a result of my cancer I have ditched traditional tea in favour of green tea. And you should too, for the sake of your prostate.

Like Popeye giving up spinach in favour of carrots, Superman developing a taste for Kryptonite or Mary Berry deciding that baking's a bit shit afterall, switching away from black tea and its milky wonders, just wasn't something that I had ever considered possible. However, today - six months after ditching the PG - I can now only drink the green stuff, and I have no regrets whatsover. It's tastier, it's healthier and it's saving me a fortune in milk.

My indoctrination into the world of green tea began around three months before I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I was in the middle of a series of blood tests to measure levels of prostate specific antigen (PSA) in my blood. A raised PSA level can be an indicator of cancer, so I consequently read as much as I could on the subject to see how I could naturally lower my PSA level and improve my overall prostate health. This, it transpires, includes eating lots of tomatoes - ideally passata - pomegranates, olive oil, oily fish and green tea.

Go green, for your prostate!

I subsequently threw myself into this prostate diet and made my way through gallons of passata and a school or two of mackerel, neither of which particularly phased me. However, the thought of sacrificing my cup of tea for something I had only ever previously had in a chinese restaurant, filled me with dread. But the benefits were clear, green tea is packed with B vitamins and antioxidants with antibacterial, anti-viral and a whole host of other health benefits, most of which are missing from black tea. There has also been a great deal of research undertaken by white-jacketed boffins who know their way around tea bags and human organs and, although there is a fair bit of contradictory evidence as to the long term health benefits of green tea, most seem to conclude that it is better for you than black tea. Apparently it comes down to polyphenons, which can slow the progresion of prostate cancer and improve prostate health, and green tea has lots of them.

I was committed to making the change and endured a period of cold turkey in regards to traditional tea, eyeing Typhoo-drinkers with hatred and daydreaming about steaming mugs of hot tea with a dash of milk. However, my taste buds changed within a couple of weeks and I began to love my cups of green tea just as much as I had always loved the tea of old. What's more, it took half as long to make - bag in cup, pour on water, done - and eliminated the milk issue that had previously made me reluctant to accept tea from the over or under pourers in my office.

As for my prostate, it turns out that I had cancer anyway, so the tea switch was unnecessary in the end, but I'm nevertheless glad that I changed my cuppa and I'd urge you to do the same. There's not a great deal men can do to look after their prostates, but if drinking green tea, sticking a can of passata in your spag bol and the occasional mackerel sandwich can reduce your risk of a disease that kills more people in the UK than breast cancer, surely it's worth it.

Anyway, enough of all that, time to put the kettle on.