Drop for drop, it’s hard to top green tea when it comes to health benefits. The drink has been shown to help fight cancer, boost the immune system, and even help you to live longer.

And now, a new study shows that it can keep you active and on your feet — especially if you’re getting up there in years.

Japanese researchers tracked nearly 14,000 seniors for up to three years, and found that those who drank the most tea were a third less likely to battle disability — including problems with everyday life, such as bathing or dressing — than those who drank the most.

This being Japan, however, the people who drank the most drank quite a bit — five cups a day (those who drank the least, on the other hand, had less than a cup on average). That’s a lot of tea, but you don’t have to drink that much to benefit. In fact, three cups a day reduced the risk of disability by a quarter.

The study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition doesn’t show why green tea helps keep seniors active and independent, and part of the reason is almost certainly because the tea drinkers in the study had healthier lifestyles overall.

But that’s not the only reason — because green tea is packed with powerful antioxidants that have shown to boost health and ward off disease before, including epigallocatechin gallate.

That’s a name that was designed to trip tongues, so we call it EGCG for short — and studies have shown that this stuff can reverse the cell damage linked to illness and disease.

Green tea has also been shown to fight cancer, gum disease, stress, depression, pneumonia, and more. It can also boost your immune system, lower your levels of bad cholesterol, reduce your stroke risk, ward off dementia, and even help you to lose weight.

It’s about as close to a “magic” elixir as you’ll find — so go and brew yourself a cup or five today.

One minute, you’re a healthy and active senior who wouldn’t dream of popping an Advil, much less a powerful prescription painkiller. The next, you’re a certified addict who can’t get through the day without an opioid drug.

Think that can’t possibly happen to you? There are lots of hardcore pill poppers out there who once thought the same thing, including plenty of seniors.

And now, new numbers show just how easily older folks get hooked, with a full 10 percent of the seniors who get these meds after minor surgical procedures still taking them a year later.

These are relatively low-pain operations that might not require opioid drugs at all — like cataract and gall bladder procedures — but the new study shows that many docs give the drugs out anyway, automatically, and without even being asked.

And the seniors who get the meds this way — as if they come as part of a package deal with the operation — are 44 percent more likely to be among the long-term users.

Even worse, the seniors still using the drugs aren’t showing any signs of stopping or even slowing down. In fact, many of them have switched to higher doses and more powerful drugs.

That’s a sure sign of addiction, since a notorious opioid side effect is tolerance. The more you take them, the less they work — which is why long-term users are on a constant hunt for something stronger.

This should be a wake-up call for doctors everywhere — because if you think these drugs ruin young lives, you should see the toll they take on the elderly.

Opioid painkillers can put you in a mental fog and cause serious cognitive problems. They can also make you loopy and unsteady on your feet, turning a once-vibrant senior into a fall waiting to happen.

And if you’re a senior yourself, you know the reality of those falls and fractures: Any one of them can be your last, robbing you of your independence and even your life.

I asked Dr. Mark Stengler about this study, and he said it’s more proof that mainstream doctors are absolutely clueless when it comes to treating pain — because there are much better options than dangerous and addictive drugs.

Your own answers to pain will depend on the cause, but Dr. Stengler suggests trying a natural supplement such as curcumin or MSM or a drug-free treatment like cold laser or acupuncture.

A naturopathic physician can help find the treatment that’ll work best for you — and keep you off the addictive meds that can ruin or even end your life.

Here’s a new way to bond with your grandson: Instead of telling him to turn off the videogames and get outside, tell him to move over so you can join him.

Videogames don’t always deserve the bad rap they get, and many of them are more than just mindless fun. They’ve got plots so rich and elaborate that they rival those of books and movies — and because you have to move the action forward yourself, they require plenty of brainpower, too.

That makes them a great way to keep your mind strong, and a new study finds one in particular can help keep yours as sharp as a battle-axe: World of Warcraft.

Seniors in a new study who spent an hour a day lost in this game’s world of warriors, warlocks, and druids showed big-time cognitive improvements over just two weeks when compared to seniors who didn’t play the game.

Even better, the seniors who scored the lowest on tests given at the start of the study actually enjoyed the biggest cognitive leaps — so if you’ve felt your own mind slip a bit, you might want to join the online gaming world sooner rather than later.

One of the reasons WoW is such a brain booster is that it’s so involved. It’s not just you versus a microchip — it’s a game that places your character into an online world populated by 10 million other human players (even if they don’t look quite human on the screen).

Together, you join these other players in a series of quests and battles that help develop your character — and these tasks often require knowing a lot more than which button will let you swing your sword or wave your wand.

They require serious thought, being engaged with the environment and interacting with others — basic skills that have shown time and again to be brain boosters no matter how you get them.

If Warcraft doesn’t sound like the world for you, then feel free to pick another game — because at least 20 other studies have found that videogames in general have terrific benefits for the brain.

You can read more about those brain-boosting video game studies on the website of Healthier Talk.

Now you’ll have to excuse me. I’m being chased by some trolls, and they don’t look happy.

Millions of seniors facing heart problems are forced to choose between bad and worse — they’re told to pick between aspirin and warfarin.

Aspirin is the “bad” half of this equation, as people who take it run a risk of serious and potentially deadly bleeding problems — especially in the stomach.

With an even higher risk of serious bleeding, warfarin — the “drug” that does double-duty as rat poison — is even worse.

Much worse.

Doesn’t sound like much of a choice to me — and that’s if the doctor even bothers to ask for your input. Too many just tell their patients what to take (and if that sounds like yours, find someone who at least pretends to be interested in your opinion).

Now, you can expect docs to push for “bad” over “worse” as a new study of heart patients finds that aspirin and warfarin users have similar outcomes and death rates.

All told, the study of 2,300 heart failure patients with an average age of 61 found that 7.5 percent of those who had been taking warfarin died during the six-year study, versus 8 percent of those on aspirin — a difference researchers say is statistically insignificant.

Warfarin users did have half the stroke risk of those who took the aspirin — but the overall risk of having one was low no matter what the patients were given, and those on the rat poison had double the risk of major bleeding problems.

Overall, that means it’s a wash — and since aspirin is cheaper and “safer,” the researchers said at a recent American Stroke Association meeting that it should be the go-to drug for heart patients instead of warfarin.

But just because aspirin is “safer” doesn’t mean it’s safe: Along with a risk of bleeding problems, aspirin has been linked to tinnitus, hearing loss, macular degeneration, erection problems, allergic reactions and more.

Why risk all that when you don’t have to?

Forget choosing between bad and worse — choose “none of the above” instead and try one of the natural options for thinning the blood, protecting the heart and slashing your stroke risk… like the fish oil you should be taking anyway.

Plain old fish oil is actually one of nature’s most powerful blood thinners — and by working with a doc who knows his natural supplements, you can get off meds like aspirin and warfarin and boost your heart health at the same time.

For more on why everyone should take fish oil, keep reading.