Get into a conversation about good health, detoxification or weight loss and it probably won’t be long before someone mentions green tea. The hot drink has gained almost legendary status in modern times as being one of the best things you can put into your body.
Included amongst the plethora of benefits to your health, it is the potential fat-burning effect that has become one of the more coveted claims of green tea. And now, rather than settling for the rather dilute strength of a cup of the tea, a more powerful extract is being added to the recipe of health and weight loss supplements.
We’re going to take a look at the positive effects of Green Tea and also the extract that you might find in any number of products the supplement market has to offer.
Other Weight Loss Ingredients
We have several articles covering some of the main ingredients in dietary supplements today. Follow any of the links below to read more about them:
Polyphenols
You’ve heard of antioxidants – and probably the antioxidant power of green tea. When you drink a cup, you’re getting a good dose of a family of them called polyphenols. More accurately, the plant that yields green tea leaves – Camellia Sinensis – contains a high quantity of polyphenols called catechins.
Catechins are bioactive in humans and get released by steeping the tea leaves in hot water, which allows you to absorb them.
The Benefits of Green Tea
The catechins from drinking the tea can provide several excellent effects on health, such as:
- Vital Organ Protection including: heart, brain, liver and vascular system
- Anti-carcinogenic activity
- Anti-diabetic activity
- Artery wall maintenance
In higher dosages than possible in a cup of Green Tea, the positive effects include an increase in fat-burning and metabolism boost. The way that is achieved is by making a concentrated extract.
Green Tea Extract
You would have to drink a lot of tea to see the significant boost in metabolism and fat-burning that the concentrated extract can provide. So much tea that it makes it practically impossible. Supplement manufacturers however can make a powerful and safe dose of Green Tea Extract fit into a small capsule that you can swallow.
A cup of green tea can give you about 50mg of the bio-active catechins, whereas a supplement can provide 500mg in a couple of small capsules. That’s ten times the power of the drink.
Not that we wouldn’t love to drink ten cups of green tea a day (and the ten trips to the bathroom) but we’d rather get our health and fat-burning benefits from the products that are available. There’s an added benefit to getting your Green Tea Extract in a supplement as well. Read on.
Stacking Ingredients
Often, the supplement company will combine several ingredients together in one recipe to increase their effect. Another way of doing it is to use different supplements together. Either way, the effects may be both improved and muliplied.
The following ingredients may increase and/or add to the effects of Green Tea Extract:
- Caffeine: a fat-burner and stimulant, it will add fat-loss power and help energy levels
- Black Pepper: increases the absorption of other ingredients including green tea extract
- Fish Oil: help bioavailability of green tea extract, improves brain health
- Glucomannan: helps provide a comfortable full feeling leading to more weight loss
- Cayenne Powder: natural fat-burner
Conclusion and Recommendations
Green Tea is an excellent choice of hot beverage, of that we are certain. However, to truly take advantage of the benefits this plant sources ingredient can have, it may be advisable to find a supplement with a decent dose of Green Tea Extract in it.
Not only will you avail of the general health improving effects, but perhaps the more specific fat-burning activity also.
Other Ingredients to Read About
Take a look at some of the other ingredient profiles we have written about:
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