Supplements Help in Weight Loss (III): Green Tea

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 | Author: admin

Green tea is one of the healthy beverages worldwide, especially for healthy weight loss purpose. Studies show that green tea can help in few areas in our health, including help in boosting metabolism, increase fat burning ability, block fat absorption, raise your immune system, promote healthier skin as well as help in anti-aging process.

What is Green Tea
Although all teas are derived from the same plant (Camellia sinensis), they are basically grouped into three main types: Green tea, oolong tea and black tea based on their preparation. For example, black tea is withered, rolled, fermented and dried for curing. Through the flavor-enhancing fermentation process, the bioactive polyphenols of the fresh leaf are oxidized, causing the loss of its full complement of beneficial polyphenols. Green tea, on the other hand, is prepared from lightly steamed and dried leaves. This steaming process inactivates the enzymes responsible for oxidation, leaving the polyphenols content intact.

The more oxidization a tea undergoes during its preparation, the darker it becomes. Heavily oxidized tea is very dark with more flavors and more caffeine. However, green tea is unoxidized. Although green tea has less aroma and caffeine, it retains much more of polyphenols, the powerful nutrients and antioxidants.

How does Green Tea help in Weight Loss
In fact, studies indicate that green tea do help in healthy weight loss program, especially consuming it in conjunction with right exercise and diet habit.

1) Green Tea helps in Boosting Metabolism

Compounds in green tea can boost your metabolism. The particular compound responsible for raising metabolism is known as EGCG or epigallocatechin gallate. It works by increasing the production of noradrenaline, which turns up your metabolism. EGCG, along with the caffeine in green tea, stimulates the central nervous system and causes fat to be released into the blood stream for the body to use as fuel. The process of fat being used for energy is called thermogenesis. Besides providing extra energy, it also sheds excess water and helps to burn body fat.

Actually, caffeine by itself can stimulate the metabolism through this way. However, studies indicate that the combined ingredients of green tea are much more effective at this process than just caffeine by itself.

2) Green Tea helps in Burning Fat

When we consume food like carbohydrates and fat, it will be synthesized into a substance, named triglyceride in our liver and small intestine. It is then carried into the bloodstream to other parts of our body tissues.

In fact, triglyceride is needed as a source of energy for life support and physical activities. However, excess amounts of triglyceride will turn into fat which subsequently causes overweight and obesity. When you take green tea, it helps in reducing this condition as green tea contains high amounts of polyphenols which activate the enzyme that is responsible for dissolving excess triglyceride. This means that green tea effectively aids in burning fat in the long run.

3) Green Tea helps in Exercising Longer

Performing right exercise is very important in a healthy weight loss program, as exercise burns calories, increases your energy and builds lean muscle which in turn helps in boosting your metabolism. The catechin polyphenols in green tea appear to stimulate the use of fatty acids by liver and muscle cells. Subsequently, it reduces the usage of carbohydrates and allows for more endurance and longer exercise times. In fact, a study using green tea extract on lab rats increased the amount of time the animals could swim before becoming exhausted by as much as 24%.

If you have more endurance, you may have extended the exercise time. This means more calories burned, and ends up in more pounds lost for healthy weight loss purpose.

Conclusion

In fact, green tea is one of the plants that are widely known and useful for overall health, especially in a healthy weight loss program. So, you may take green tea supplements as a replacement of drinking green tea as you would need to drink 5 or more cups of the tea to get the amount of EGCG required to produce an effect.

Besides, you can also read my weight loss program article if you are interested in knowing other proven ingredients or supplements in the market that help in a healthy weight loss program. There are 3 challenges you might face in any ways to lose weight, and you might surprise that there are different targeted supplements for different challenges you face before you can lose extra pounds of your weight.

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