You can drink green tea for health benefits, but therapeutic use requires a green tea extract, taken as a supplement.

There is a lot of literature out there about CLL leukemia and green tea.  Go ahead and Google “CLL green tea” and you will come up with pages of references.  Green tea is supposed to halt the progression of CLL and, in some cases, improve symptoms.  That’s wonderful.  The good part of this is that it’s a food item (when taken as tea) and a food extract when taken as a supplement.  If you’re interested in a good quality, green tea extract, go to Life Extension.

Do I use it?  Yes and no.  I do drink green tea, practically every day. But not in therapeutic doses.  That’s because, in my case, my platelet count dropped noticeably each time I tried it at recommended levels.  Worse yet, there was no discernible benefit.  The studies I’ve looked up indicate that green tea does, in fact, affect the “aggregation” or clumping together of platelets — a good thing for people with heart disease.  While I can find no literature to back up my experience, it is what it is.  I do reserve the right to try green tea in therapeutic doses (beverage AND supplements) in the future.  But for now, I’m sticking to my already very-full and somewhat complicated program for good health.

If you want more information, you might take a look at the Mayo Clinic study in progress till March 2011.