Green tea is a 4,000+ year Chinese secret herbal medicine used for a bunch of ailments from headaches to depression. But did you know that green tea can be used as an integral part of your weight loss arsenal? Yes, it’s true!

Green tea has been under the scrutiny of tons of research. Researchers are trying to figure which compounds are making green tea an all-around potent health drink. There are several antioxidants which generate the health benefits, including losing weight.

American and Swiss scientists teamed up to better understand the weight loss benefits of green tea. The results were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and Urology. According to lead researcher D. Abdul Dullo, there are only two ways to lose weight – brace yourself – (1) eat less and (2) become more active.

I told you to brace yourself! Anyway, it turns out that green tea turns the volume up on your metabolism rate. Higher metabolism = weight loss.

At the University of Geneva, Dr. Dullo and crew took ten healthy men and theorized that the caffeine in green tea caused the subsequent weight loss. They put the theory to the test, that put the ten men on a diet with the following percentages: 40% fat, 13% protein, 47% carbs.

To figure out how much energy the men used each day, the researchers measured the number of calories burned every eight hours. They also measured how well their metabolism burned up their daily intake of carbs, fat and protein.

When the scientists crunched the numbers, the green tea group’s metabolism increased, they burned more fat and they achieved maximum weight loss. The caffiene-only group’s metabolism didn’t really increase enough to write home about…

The moral of that story: the caffeine in green tea does little contribute to the weight loss benefits. So what gives? The scientists pinpointed the substance catechin polyphenol that gives green tea its weight loss benefit. This substance is thought to interact with the hormone norepinephrine which is responsible for increasing the metabolism rate, thus leading to weight loss.

Here’s the article in a nutshell: drink green tea regularly = increased metabolism = you lose more weight than if you didn’t drink green tea.

If you really want to get the most out of your Green Tea experience read below:

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