Green Tea and Losing Weight
For thousands of years, Chinese and Japanese have been using green tea as a beverage and as herbal medicine. Only recently, the western medical world started to take notice of the aspect to use green tea as a herbal medicine. Within the past years, numerous studies on the antioxidant and chemotherapeutic effects of green tea have been conducted. Research conducted both in the United States and in Switzerland indicates that there is a strong connection between green tea and losing weight.
In December 1999 the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and Urology published a study indicating that certain compounds containted in green tea extracts might promote weight loss. At the University of Geneva, Switzerland, Dr. Abdul Dulloo conducted a research on healthy young men who ranged in size and weight from lean to slightly overweight. These men were put on a typical American diet and, in addition, were asked to take with each meal a capsule with green tea and caffeine, a capsule containing only caffeine, or a placebo. Results showed that those men who took the green tea capsules had burned more calories on average. This clearly shows that the connection between green tea and losing weight is no myth after all.
Green tea and losing weight may also be connected through the assumption that green tea can be an active combatant against fat. It is widely acknowledged that in order to really lose weight and stay healthy, the fat content of the body must be reduced. In studies, probands who drank a bottle of tea fortified with green tea extract every day for three months lost more body fat than probands who drank a regular bottle of oolong tea. The polyphenols in green tea can delay the reaction of gastric and pancreatic lipases in the body. These enzymes are responsible for converting calories into fat. By delaying these enzymes, fat is stopped from being stored and thus obesity is prevented.
However, there might be another reason why green tea and losing weight seem to be connected. The simple fact is that green tea can satisfy people like no other tea can. By drinking a cup or more together with a meal, there is a good chance that one doesn’t need to eat as much as one would without green tea.
It can be concluded that green tea really seems to help lose weight. And the great thing about it is that it doesn’t have any adverse side-effects.