Green tea is an ancient beverage known for burning fat and maintaining metabolism.
Recent scientific studies have provided new insights into the understanding of the mechanisms of green tea and revealed that it helps the body manage weight and burn fat.
The research studies funded by FAPESP have deepened knowledge about the prime role of green tea treatment in weight management and significantly improved the insulin resistance in obese mice.
However, the results support the potential of the beverage as an aid in the treating obesity in humans.
The results of a recent study were published in the journal Cell Biochemistry & Function.
The research team fed mice a high-caloric diet or ‘cafeteria’ diet for four weeks- a regimen that mimics the Western diet in order to study the effects of green tea on obesity.
Rosemari Otton who led the study from the Interdisciplinary Graduate in Health Sciences at Cruzeiro do Sul University in Sao Paulo, Brazil said, " We give them chocolate, filled cookies, condensed milk."
He explained in other words that it was the same type of food that many people consume on a daily basis.
The animals continued the green tea experiment for another 12 weeks after the initial phase.
They continued on the high caloric diet during this period but some of them began receiving standardized green tea extract at a dose of 500 mg per kilogram of body weight.
The researcher noted that not all commercial green tea meets the mandatory specifications as tea pouches do not always guarantee the quantity and quality of compounds simultaneously.
It has been observed that the ideal for consumption would be to use standardized bioactive compounds like those found in pharmacies.
Otton points out that this is a concentrated way of using the plant with a guarantee of the presence of flavonoids, which are the health-beneficial compounds found in the green tea plant.
The recent study showed the preservation of muscle morphology-which is typically reduced by obesity and green tea actually prevented this muscle atrophy.
To access this muscle function, we look at fiber diameter; if it increases, we know we have more contractile filaments.
Green tea manages to maintain this diameter, and it protects muscle against the harmful effects of obesity.
The research evidence suggests that green tea does not affect the weight of lean animals propounding that it acts selectively against excess body fat.
Another aspect demonstrated that green tea is a complex matrix with dozens of biologically active compounds.
The researchers tried to separate these compounds, but the whole extract proved to be more effective than isolating them individually.
The encouraging results of the mouse study demonstrated that it is not possible to determine a safe and powerful dose of green tea for humans.
This is particularly due to the variability of the extracts and the fact that each person reacts differently.
It has been observed that people in Japan consume green tea every day and have low obesity rates.
This approach is completely different from drinking tea for five months and expecting rapid weight loss.
The study further suggests that science intends to build practical solutions, and what we observed in animals is not always reproduced in humans.
To practically validate this transition to the real world, we need to analyze every detail such as ambient temperature and necessary precautions, to increase data validity and obtain the most accurate results.
