Does Green Tea Really Help You Lose Weight Quickly?

There are a lot of myths about ways to lose weight quickly. How about green tea? We know well it’s high in certain essential properties, including antioxidants. But can it also help burn more pounds of your weight?  If so, how does it work?

Health benefits from green tea

Large-scale researches on green tea are currently focused on its effectiveness to help reduce the risk of cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Also, most studies were conducted in the East (particularly East Asia) where drinking tea is a dietary mainstay.

Here are a few pieces of information about green tea health benefits.

Green tea has an active compound called catechins, an antioxidant. Catechins can act as a protector for the body to fight against free radicals that may provoke abnormal growth (cancer) and DNA damage.

Free radicals may also increase the risk of arthrosclerosis and blood clots which then put you at high risk of cardiovascular diseases.

What makes green tea different is probably its minimal processing. Unlike other teas, the leaves are not fermented but only withered & steamed. Furthermore, green tea also contains EGCG ‘epigallocatechin-3-gallate’ (one of unique catechins).

But any kinds of tea (including green tea) also contain caffeine. So moderation is still required. Remember, too much caffeine would also be bad for blood flow, because excessive caffeine can increase blood pressure.

Some studies confirmed the effectiveness of green tea to help improve heart health, but this is only one of many factors.

Your overall diet and lifestyles are much more critical to the outcomes. In other words, you cannot rely on drinking tea alone – other factors also have a role (e.g. regular exercise and well-balanced diet).

There are some studies showed that green tea may help reduce the risk of some cancers – though this link is not fully understood yet.

Epidemiologically, there is still no strong scientific evidence to confirm this issue, because it’s not easy to find adequate populations that stick with drinking green tea for long time — particularly in this modern living when fast foods are very common everywhere.

East countries are common areas where the effectiveness of tea is observed. On the other hand, it is difficult to do the research in western countries where drinking tea is less common.

According to Japanese study, green tea might help reduce the recurrence of breast cancer.

The takeaway, though the effectiveness of the tea for cancer still remains puzzling, it’s hard to resist that green tea is always helpful for everyone including those with cancer.

So, does drinking green tea really work for weight loss?

In very limited clinical trials, green tea may help decrease the levels of LDL (bad cholesterol) and fight obesity – both are two common risk factors behind diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

In Japanese research that involved about 240 women and men. All participants were given varying amounts of extract of green tea – they took it for about 3 months. The result of the study showed that participants who experienced the greatest amount fat loss and also had lower levels of blood pressure & LDL are those who took the highest amounts of green tea extract.

The same result also showed in the Dutch research. But, how do the ingredients of green tea help lose weight?

When antioxidants play a key role for cancer-fighting, caffeine of green tea may be the answer for weight loss. There is also a theory that catechins may have an effect.

What’s more?