Believe it or not, more and more often you'll find green tea or green tea extract integrated in the content of many of the more popular weight loss supplements today.
Why are supplement makers so quick to include green tea in their weight loss products? Well, the advantages of green tea are numerous.
Specially, and most importantly, green tea extract often replaces the caffeine component of the standard ephedrine - caffeine - salicin (aspirin) fat burning stack. That makes it an upright quality fat burner in and of itself.
However, if that's all green tea did, this would be a pretty short article. Fortunately, it provides additional benefits - far and beyond what plain caffeine could do. First, it's a powerful anti-oxidant, just like vitamin C and beta-carotene. But researchers have suggested that the active ingredient (called epigallocatechin gallate), may be up to 200 times more powerful than vitamin E as an oxidant.
Green tea may be useful as a glucose regulator - meaning it slows the rise in blood sugar following a meal.
It does this by slowing the action of a particular digestive enzyme called amylase. This enzyme is essential in the breakdown of starches (carbs) that can cause blood sugar levels to ascend following a meal. This is pretty exciting stuff - together with chromium, and possibly a vanadyl supplement, green tea might be the missing link in proper glucose management.
Green tea has also helped support weight loss by raising the metabolic rate, causing those who use it to feel greater calorie burn.
A recent study further validates green tea's effectiveness. The latest study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Vol. 81, No. 1, 122-129, January 2005), indicated the ingestion of a tea rich in catechins - a major component of green tea extract, leads to both a lowering of body fat and of cholesterol levels.
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