Green Tea: The Science behind This Natural Weight-Loss Herb

Green tea has been regarded as a healthful drink for centuries. The Chinese credited the ancient beverage with providing benefits to body weight and longevity. Anecdotally, people who grow up in a tea-drinking culture tend to be more slender and healthy. Green tea is often included in today’s popular diets, which emphasize organic products and all-natural methods.

Although green tea gets rave comments by its users, even reviews of best weight loss programs still sometimes overlook why it has such healthful effects—and sometimes even what those effects are. A scientific paper published in Molecular Nutrition and Food Research reviewed many studies about the topic to explain how and why green tea can help you lose weight.

Catechins: Why Green Tea Offers Health Benefits

Green tea is rich in catechins, the compounds that are responsible for many its health benefits. When you hold dried tea leaves, about a quarter of the weight in your hand can be attributed to the catechins. One catechin in particular, known as EGCG, is credited with causing the following green tea’s healthful effects.

It Burns Calories

Green tea increases your basal metabolic rate—the number of calories your body burns in a day while at rest. Even if you never got out of bed, your body would still burn those calories to sustain life. Just by drinking green tea, you can encourage your body to burn more calories naturally and effortlessly.

It Burns Fat

Drinking green tea can help to reduce your body fat. Tea drinkers lose more fat, especially belly fat (a type of fat deposit that increases your risk for obesity-related maladies). One 12-week study showed that participants who drank catechin-enriched tea lost significantly more weight than those who didn’t.

It Blocks Fat Formation

Like every other tissue in your body, your fat deposits are made up of cells, which we call adipocytes. Before your body can store fat, it has to create these fat cells that will house it. Those cells are formed from other cells (known as pre-adipocytes) that are not able to store fat. Green tea stops the pre-adipocytes from becoming fat cells. With fewer adipocytes your body is not able to store much fat. As a result, fatty tissue is unable to grow and your body stays slimmer.

It’s also possible that green tea reduces the effect of digestive enzymes, making your body absorb less fat and fewer carbohydrates from the food you eat. This would reduce the number of calories that your body removes from food and further decrease the amount of fat that can be absorbed into cells.

It Improves Heart Health

One study found that green tea could help keep your heart healthy. It was found to reduce the levels of cholesterol and fatty acids in the bloodstream. Of course, because high cholesterol and fatty acids in the blood consist a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, green tea’s lipid-reducing effects are helpful for keeping your heart in good shape.

It Helps You Lose Weight

Although not as natural as a cup of warm tea, green tea extract capsules were also shown to be beneficial. Interestingly, overweight research participants who took green tea extract capsules reduced their waist-to-hip ratio by about the same amount reported for people who take anti-obesity drugs.

Unlike many prescription and over-the-counter anti-obesity drugs, a cup of green tea has no unpleasant side effects. Drinking green tea is an all-natural way to lose weight and get healthy. Even one cup a day could help—the studies reviewed showed that being a long-term, habitual tea-drinker is more important than drinking large amounts of tea.

The Author:
John Medows is a writer and medical researcher whose interest focuses on cardiovascular and obesity treatments. He often posts Nutrisystem discount coupons and a promotion code for Medifast discount.