Green Tea Studies

Green tea has been in use for more than 4000 years and Chinese medicine men used them for almost all the common illnesses including headaches, body ache, poor digestion. The extract of green tea is rich in antioxidants which help in fighting the free radicals in the body, which usually cause the cancer in a human. It is also a known fact that Green Tea protects the digestive and respiratory systems from serious infections. It blocks all the carcinogens which promote cancer and it is also known to help lower blood cholesterol levels. But all these have not been documented and only very recently research had begun into the actual benefits derived from Green Tea and a number of Studies and research projects have been done on the subject of Green Tea.

The first serious and documented research came about in 1987 when everybody heard of its medicinal value from a National Cancer Institute researcher who was excited by new studies claiming that EGCG blocked the cancer.

In one of such studies conducted by researcher Tomonori Nagao of Health Care Products Research Laboratories in Tokyo showed that people who drank a bottle of tea with green tea extract every day for three months lost more body fat than those who drank a bottle of regular tea. Researchers say the results indicate that substances found in green tea known as catechins may well have triggered weight loss by stimulating the body to burn more calories and thus decreasing the body fat.

The same study has proved that most teas contain large quantity of polyphenols, which are basically derivates of a plant based substances that have been know to have antioxidant, anticancer, and antiviral properties. However, when it comes to green tea, it has been found to be very rich in one particular type of polyphenols called the catechins. These substances are known to have anti-inflammatory and anticancer properties, but recent research done on the animals does confirm that catechins can also act on the fatty deposits and cholesterol levels.

In this study to find the effectiveness of catechins in reducing the fat, researchers looked have chose a group of 35 Japanese men at the effects, all of them with similar weights base on the body mass index and waist sizes.

These men were then divided into two separate groups and for three months the first group drank a bottle of normal tea fortified with green tea extract and the other group drank a bottle of normal tea without the extract. During this period of three months the men ate same food and were taking the same number of calories and fat, so overall the food intake for all the 35 men was same. After three months, the study showed that the men who drank green tea extract lost 5.3 pounds and reduced waist size and the amount of total body fat in their bodies. This study has proven beyond doubt that catechins present in tea would definitely reduce the weight.