Simon Mills

In this case, it's green, obviously.

And green tea is just the smoked, unprocessed part of the tea leaf.

It's a plant called Camellia sinensis.

So this is a nice Japanese teapot.

That's the sort of thing you'd have green tea in.

And these are the mugs, but we've filled these off already with ginger and cinnamon.

So let's leave it for a moment.

But while it's sitting there for a while, there are a number of these polyphenols in green tea that seem to be particularly effective in modulating that barrier we talked about, the neurovascular unit between the brain and the rest of us.

And

There's all sorts of reasons why regular consumption of green tea seems to be linked to less of this sort of trouble.

What sort of trouble?

Dementia-type problems, cognitive decline as you get older.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean there's a cause and effect.

So you need a few other things to establish that relationship.

What we're finding is that other plants have very likely powerful effects in this area, and I mentioned the rosemary.

Now, all you need to do to appreciate rosemary is to press it and sniff.

Really nice.

That's not just nice, because what you're doing there is you're inhaling volatile oils, the things that give the smell, and when you're inhaling...

They're literally going into your brain because part of the brain actually reaches the outside world.

It's called the olfactory lobe.