If you're going to add anything to your diet to be healthier, green tea and turmeric are great choices. By switching out coffee for green tea and adding a bit of turmeric spice to your foods, you could be doing your body a huge service. Both have a long list of accolades when it comes to health. Recently, they both added a few new things to their lists: they were found to help maintain normal blood pressure, reduce heart cell damage, and reduce the negative effects of anti-cancer drugs by reducing the amount of cardiotoxity formed in the heart.

Over the last five years, professor R Balaraman and research students from Michigan State University's pharmacy department have been conducting studies focused on reducing the negative effects that anti-cancer medication can have upon the heart. The research focused on the anti-cancer drug doxorubicin, which is a popular anti-cancer drug that is known to cause congestive heart failure with long-term use. Doxorubicin induces cardiotoxicity, which is potentially fatal.

During their studies, the researchers found that green tea and turmeric increased antioxidant levels in the heart, reduced doxorubicin caused free radicals, and provided beneficial effects to the heart. They also found that they protected the heart against cardiotoxicity without reducing the anti-cancer effects of doxorubicin in any way. This is great news for those taking anti-cancer drugs.

Vipin Dhote and Balaraman wrote a paper about the research and presented it at the Conference of Indian Pharmacology Society at AIIMS. The paper was met with much enthusiasm.

While this is great news, there is no information about how much green tea and turmeric are needed to help protect the heart against the negative effects of doxorubicin. There is also no absolute finality that green tea and turmeric will work on the hearts of humans - yet. The researchers experimented with animals during their studies, and future clinical trials with humans are planned for the future.

In the meantime, enjoy some turmeric in your foods and drink some green tea for all the health benefits they offer beyond and above protecting the heart from cardiotoxicity.