Green Tea Diet Review
Due to the popularity of recent findings, green tea has almost become synonymous with weight loss and diet. The addition of green tea into diet pills and weight loss supplements is perhaps spurred by reports of harmful side-effects of other drugs like ephedra.
Why Choose A Green Tea Diet?
For four thousand years, green tea has been used all throughout Asia as a beneficial health and medicinal drink. A green tea diet is different from other tea diets because the liquid is extracted by steaming the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant instead of full oxidation. In this way, green tea manages to preserve a lot more antioxidants and keep them intact for the body to use.
Chinese green tea is an excellent source of polycatechin polyphenols, a group of antioxidants that act on free radicals. These free radicals have harmful effects on the body since they are the major causes of diseases and aging. With green tea's polycatechin polyphenols, anybody has a better chance of avoiding illness and keeping themselves healthy for a longer period of time.
Another antioxidant in green tea is also being studied as a potential cure for cancer. Epigallocatechin gallate or EGCG found in a tea diet destroys cancer cells while keeping surrounding healthy cells safe.
The EGCG in green tea also works with another compound, caffeine. The interaction of these two compounds causes a green tea diet to promote thermogenesis in the body.
It has been noted by a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that one of the health benefits of tea is an increase in the body’s total 24-hour energy use by up to four percent. This is roughly equivalent to losing more than 10 pounds of weight a month.
A diet rich in green tea helps increase the body’s metabolic rates. With its thermogenic properties, green tea promotes faster metabolism of fats and sugars. The excess glucose in the body is turned into fats by the hormone insulin. Because a green tea diet has an inhibiting effect on insulin, green tea helps keep the sugar from being stored as fats and send them directly to the muscles for immediate use.
The Downside Of A Green Tea Diet
Although there are many health benefits of tea, scientific proof is still mixed. However, in an article published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, American researchers collaborated with their Chinese counterparts to discuss the beneficial effects of a green tea diet on cholesterol levels.
Using 240 men and women (average age 55) who possess mild to moderately high LDL cholesterol levels, the researchers instructed them to retain their usual low-fat diet, green tea diet intake, and activity levels. After twelve weeks, it was found that those who consumed green tea diet extract with their regular meals lost more than fifteen percent of their total LDL cholesterol levels.
Although the researchers never explained how green tea diet may influence cholesterol levels, previous studies have shown that certain compounds in green tea diet play a role in reducing the amount of cholesterol absorbed by the body, increasing amount of cholesterol excreted, and thus keeping cholesterol from being stored in the liver.
Subsequent studies were made to test the findings of the first group of researchers. Their results were contradictory. They found that green tea diet has no significant effect on the cholesterol profiles of their subjects.
There is no such thing as a miracle diet. Green tea diet, like all other diets, needs a lot of work and input from those who enroll in it. Green tea diet required both discipline and heart for it to make any significant impact on your weight loss goals.
