Being obese means more than just carrying too much weight.
It multiplies the risk of heart disease, diabetes and more than a dozen cancers.
There’s no “magic bullet” for curing obesity. But there is one ancient drink with a reputation as a powerful weight loss aid.
One researcher decided to dig a little deeper to find out exactly why it works.
Here’s what she found…
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How exactly does green tea help burn fat?
Prof. Rosemari Otton of Cruzeiro do Sul University in São Paulo, Brazil, has dedicated more than 15 years to green tea research.
She knew that in a previous study, obese mice treated with green tea saw a reduction of 30 percent in their body weight.
“If a person loses 5% to 10% of their body weight, that’s already a lot. So, this result in animals is very significant,” notes Prof. Otton.
Wanting to find out more about the mechanisms behind these positive results, she and her team fed mice a high-calorie diet for four weeks. They called it a “cafeteria diet,” which basically mimicked a typical Western diet.
“We give them chocolate filled cookies, dulce de leche, condensed milk… In other words, the same type of food that many people consume on a daily basis.”
Several metabolic mechanisms revealed
After the initial four weeks, the experiment continued for another 12 weeks, except that now some of the mice began receiving a dose of green tea extract equivalent to drinking about three cups of green tea per day.
The mice were kept in “thermoneutral” temperatures where they did not have to expend any energy in keeping warm. Thus, the metabolic changes could be reliably attributed to the effects of green tea.
Obesity typically causes a reduction in muscle fiber diameter (weaker muscles), but green tea prevented this atrophy.
This could be explained by the fact that treatment with green tea increased the expression of five specific genes that are important for glucose uptake and use in muscles.
There was also evidence that green tea does not affect the weight of lean animals, suggesting that it acts selectively against excess body fat…
“It makes obese animals lose weight but keeps lean animals at a balanced weight. This shows that the tea seems to need an environment with excess nutrients to act, which supports the hypothesis that it acts directly on fat cells.”
In addition, green tea had no effect on mice whose fat cells did not produce the protein adiponectin, which controls inflammation and regulates metabolism. This suggested to the researchers that adiponectin is a key player in the way green tea works to burn fat.
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Not all green tea is created equal
Alltogether, these mechansims support green tea’s reputation for burning fat and blancing blood sugar, improving metabolism and muscle health and hint strongly that it could provide natural support for healthy weight management.
However, Prof. Otton emphasizes that not all commercial green tea meets the necessary quality standards or contains the right amount of natural fat-burning compounds.
“Ready-made tea bags do not always guarantee the quantity or quality of the compounds,” she says.
“The ideal for consumption would be to use standardized green tea extract like those found in compounding pharmacies. This is a concentrated way of using the plant, with a guarantee of the presence of flavonoids, which are the health-beneficial compounds present in the green tea plant.”
Green tea is an incredible tool in your arsenal to promote health, but don’t overdo it. For most people, one to four cups of green tea daily is considered safe. Just be sure to avoid high-dose green tea extracts in supplement form if you also drink it.
Since flavonoids seem to be the key player in green tea’s fat-burning ability, why not get them wherever they’re found?
You can increase your flavonoid intake by eating:
- Blueberries
- Strawberries
- Raspberries
- Tomatoes
- Red grapes
- Soy beans
- Onions
- Apples
Sources:
Scientists reveal green tea’s fat-burning secret — Science Daily
Does Green Tea Ameliorate Obesity in Mice Kept at Thermoneutrality by Modulating Skeletal Muscle Metabolism? — Cell Biochemistry & Function
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