 Which plant should we give for which skin disease? There have been thousands of studies published to date about the health effects of green tea, but it wasn't until fairly recently that researchers have begun to look at the possibility of using green tea for the prevention and treatment of infections. Patents have been taken out on the antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral properties of tea. Let's review some of the evidence. In terms of fungal infections, green tea compounds demonstrated potent antifungal activity against the primary cause of athlete's foot, fungal nail infections, jock itch, and ringworm, comparable in some cases to powerful antifungal drugs like fluconazole. Oh, okay, but this is in a Petri dish. How about a green tea foot bath for athlete's foot fungus between the toes? Evidently, tea leaves were once used as a folk remedy for the fungus, so why not put it to the test? And indeed, a once-a-day 15-minute dilute green tea foot bath led to a significant improvement in symptoms compared to control. Green tea baths also appeared to help with fungus-associated etopic dermatitis, though there was no control group. And full-strength green tea may help clear candida yeast from poorly cleaned dentures. How about for the bacteria that cause plaque and gingivitis? Even a 2% green tea mouthwash was found to be effective. Yes, you should be able to control plaque just with proper brushing and flossing, but with an emphasis on proper. Most people don't brush the recommended 4 minutes a day, and so a dilute green tea mouthwash may help. Now in terms of strictly plaque-bacteria-killing ability, green tea got beat out by a garlic-with-lime mouth rinse. But I think I'll just stick with a green tea, thank you very much. Especially when green tea appears to not just kill plaque bugs directly, but also boost the antibacterial capacity of saliva after you drink it. What about green tea for acne? Six weeks of a 2% green tea lotion cut the number of pimples more than half, and significantly reduced the severity, making it a cheap, effective treatment for acne. Impotigo is another bacterial skin infection that can affect the face, but a tea ointment can affect an 80% cure rate on par with antibiotics given topically or orally. What about bladder infections? We know a certain concentration of green tea compounds can kill the type of E. coli that causes urinary tract infections. The question then becomes how much tea do you have to drink to achieve those concentrations in your bladder? And it turns out, not much. Just one cup of tea might have an effect, but you might have to space out multiple cups over the day since it gets cleared out of your system within about 8 hours. So, where we stand now, the test tube data looks good, but there is yet to be a single study to put it to the test, so should at this point just be used as an adjunct therapy for bladder infections. But with emerging multi-drug resistant organisms, green tea certainly holds potential. Wait a second, though. If it's so good at killing bacteria, if we drink green tea, might we be killing the good bacteria in our gut? No, that's the amazing thing, a great advantage against other bacteria-killing agents, no effect on our intestinal flora. But that may actually not be true. Drinking green tea may actually boost the levels of our good bacteria. By acting as a prebiotic and thereby improve the colon environment.