German researchers find improved fat oxidation when men combine EGCG with caffeine.

From improving arthritis symptoms to preventing heart disease, heightening eye health to discouraging Alzheimer’s disease development, green tea is the libation of choice for health aficionados.  Yet as multifaceted a drink green tea is, could encouraging weight loss be added to its repertoire?  German researchers sure think so.

A team of researchers from Berlin’s University Medicine recruited 10 middle-aged men who, besides being obese, were generally healthy.  They broke the 10 men into groups of two and randomly assigned them to take an allotted amount of EGCG, some in high doses, others in low doses.  EGCG is the antioxidant compound in green tea believed to make it such a nutritional powerhouse.

One of the cooler aspects of this study is that all the men got a turn in taking a specific amount of EGCG.  In other words, instead of taking a specific amount of EGCG for the length of the study period, the men would take 300 mg of EGCG for three days, then go off for seven days, then pick up their EGCG regimen for another three days.  But instead of taking the same amount as last time, they’d take 600 milligrams.  Then go on to another group 10 days later.  So by the end of the study, all 10 men had gone through the five regimens.

(To be honest, I wish more studies were set up like this.  It makes the results of the study more reliable.)

By the end of the study, the researchers found increases in fat oxidation across the spectrum.  Compared to the time in which they took a placebo for three days, fat oxidation increased 33 percent (300 mg of EGCG daily), 20 percent (600 mg of EGCG daily), 34.5 percent (200 mg of caffeine), and 49 percent (200 mg of caffeine combined with 300 mg of EGCG).

What’s interesting is that there was greater fat oxidation when the men took the lower EGCG combination as compared to the high EGCG combination.  So apparently the Goldilocks rule applies to EGCG—not too much, not too little, but an amount that’s “just right” works for weight loss.

The question, of course, is how many drinks of green tea must one guzzle in order to see any significant weight loss?

Researchers say it may be as few as three drinks or as many as 10 drinks…per day!  Now, as much as I like to drink tea, I don’t have the time, nor the inclination to drink that amount of green tea every day!

But that as it may, the very fact that I could lose weight by drinking that amount of green tea every day illustrates just how amazing a drink green tea is.

The study is published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Sources:
nutraingredients.com

Stress reduction can now be added to the many benefits of green tea consumption.

If you’re at all fascinated by numbers and whether or not they’re lucky or unlucky, the number five is right up there with the number seven in signaling prosperity.  Let me explain what I mean…

Earlier this year, I wrote about a study out of Japan that found that drinking five cups of green tea per day reduced the risk of getting various forms of cancer by 50 percent.

Two months later, and out comes another green tea study showing improved health with five cups per day.  What kind of better health?  Reduced stress levels.

Stress is sort of like death and taxes:  there’s no avoiding it.  Whether it’s something as simple as a worrying over a test, or something more serious like worrying about a loved one serving in the military, stress complicates life and complicates our health.  It’s so serious, in fact, that it can significantly increases the risk for chronic heart disease when not kept in check.  That’s where green tea comes in.

Now, the notion that green tea can relieve stress symptoms is nothing new.  Nor is the notion that green tea improves health overall, as you’ll discover by writing “green tea” in the search bar of this Web site or any other search engine for that matter.  But these reports have mainly been anecdotal; there hasn’t been any large scale studies demonstrating its stress-relieving capability.

That is, until now, because according to findings from Tohoko University Graduate School researchers, there’s a “significant” relationship between stress levels and how much green tea people drink.  Their findings aren’t based on some small scale study of 10 or 20 people, either.  Try over 42,000, with six to seven percent of those 42,000 complaining of chronic psychological stress symptoms.  Those stress symptoms were relieved, however, among those assigned to drink at least five cups of green tea per day.

The study’s complete findings are published in the October 2009 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

What makes green tea so stress-relieving?  The researchers aren’t sure, but past research points to the polyphenol EGCG.  EGCG is a very potent polyphenol that’s been associated with a variety of health benefits, like relieving fatigue and decreasing cancer risk.

Now, drinking five cups of green tea may sound like a lot, but it’s really not, especially if you start drinking it in place of things.  For instance, instead of a cup of coffee in the morning, try drinking a cup of green tea with two tea bags instead of one (the extra bag will supply an extra 20 mg of caffeine).  Instead of a water after a workout, try a chilled down green tea beverage instead.  The sodium and potassium will supply the electrolytes that are lost during rigorous workout sessions.

As far as what’s the best green tea to choose from, always opt for organically brewed tea, paying special attention to its “Sell By” date.  For the sake of taste – not to mention nutrition – you don’t want anything that’s been sitting on the shelf unopened for more than six months.  The further the “Sell By” date is from the date in which you’re purchasing, the better.  Once opened, the shelf-life reduces even further.

Sources:
nutraingredients.com
beveragedaily.com

Green tea may slow the growth of prostate cancer.

This past Sunday was pretty eventful day on the calendar.  Not only was it the first day of summer, but it was also Father’s Day.  And in an effort to honor the most influential man in most of our lives, Major League Baseball and the boys of summer wore baby blue wristbands and ribbons to raise awareness for prostate cancer.  Prostate cancer is second only to lung cancer in its prevalence among men – with 240,000 new diagnoses expected this year alone.

As great and admirable as this was, MLB teams could have taken the honorific a step further by filling those Gatorade coolers in dugouts with some iced green tea, as a recent study suggests it may slow the progression of prostate cancer.

There are of course lots of changes that take place in the body after prostate cancer diagnosis.  One of them is found in the blood’s serum.  There are several types of serums, all of them with alphabet-soup names like hepatocyte and endothelial.  These serum levels – or what are often referred to as “biomarkers” in assessing the degree to which prostate cancer has infected someone – are high in people who are diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Researchers wanted to see how green tea might impact the aforementioned serum levels of approximately 26 men who were diagnosed with prostate cancer by having them consume green tea capsules for varying amounts of time over the study period (the median time of supplementation was 34.5 days).  The men ranged in age from 41 to 72 years old.

Results indicated that all the men showed reductions in these “biomarkers,” with some of the serum levels dropping as much as 30 percent!

The active ingredient in green tea believed to play a role in reducing these biomarkers are green tea’s polyphenols – specifically Polyphenon E.

More details of the study are published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research and it was conducted by professors and researchers from Louisiana State University’s Feist-Weiller Cancer Center.

What makes this study so significant is two-fold: 1) It gives further justification of why so many people are gaga for green tea (second only to coffee as the most popular drink in the world) and 2) Its another avenue people have in delaying a cancer that can spread very quickly when not detected early.

Anything that can help delay a virulent strain of cancer should be shouted from the rooftops, especially if it’s natural.  But green tea can do more than just delay its progression.  As the study’s lead researcher himself said, James A. Cardelli, “There is reasonably good evidence that many cancers are preventable [emphasis added], and our studies using plant-derived substances support the idea that plant compounds found in a healthy diet can play a role in preventing cancer development …”

As always, more studies need to be done, as the LSU researchers say this study wasn’t randomized, thus somewhat precluding the reliability of the findings.  But the results of this study are similar to one conducted by another research team, which was randomized, and that one was a year in length.  And this study contributes to the smorgasbord of studies and literature involving green tea, all of which show advances in health, vitality and disease avoidance when supplemented into one’s daily diet.

Sources:
sciencedaily.com
usatoday.com