Green Tea - Lose Weight Naturally

One of the hottest topics of debate recently is weight loss and it's no secret that there are dime a dozen products that are targeting those with an intention to lose weight. The weight loss pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industry is set to become a 150 billion dollar industry in the coming years.

Obesity is one of the leading causes of heart disease, strokes, diabetes, falls and fractures, low self-esteem among a host of other conditions. Obesity has reached a pandemic status and is beginning to rear its head in developing countries too. It is little wonder that extensive research is being undertaken in the field of obesity. Doctors all over the world have been harping on the benefits of a multi-dimensional approach to tackle obesity. Healthy diets that are limited in calories, an active exercise regime and for those extremely obese patients various medications are advocated. A co-ordinated effort is required to tackle this burden of obesity and make the world a leaner place.

Amongst the glut of medications available to tackle the bulge more and more interest is now being shown towards natural products. Primarily this is because several prescription drugs have fallen by the wayside due to adverse effects on the patient. Natural products have the benefit of no additional side effects and a reasonable efficacy. One of the products that is often looked at with some interest is the Green Tea.

Green tea has the ability to boost the body's metabolic rate and energy expenditure to help promote reductions in weight and body fat. If you are looking to lose weight quickly, safely and permanently look no beyond the green tea. Green tea has been used as a medicine for over 4000 years in Chinese Medicine. It has the potential to fight a host of diseases from headaches to depression to cancer! Research has shown that green tea reduces the incidence of various cancers (by virtue of its anti-oxidant properties), lowers total cholesterol levels and improves the good to bad cholesterol ratio. Green tea is rich in a class of compounds called as catechin polyphenols, especially a compound identified as Epigallocatechin Gallate (EGCG). It is a powerful anti-oxidant, helps fight cholesterol, prevents abnormal clotting of blood amongst other virtues. Green tea is derived from the plant Camellia Sinensis. What makes it special among other teas is that green tea leaves are steamed rather than being made from fermented leaves which causes tea to lose its EGCG levels.

New research has shown that green tea can benefit people aiming at weight loss. One of the research papers showed that men given a combination of green tea and caffeine burned more calories than men who were given only caffeine. Green tea can increase basal metabolic rate by 3%. Think about the reason why so few Asians are obese! So fire up your metabolism and accelerate your body's natural rate of calorie burning with green tea.

To summarize Green tea extract works by increasing the thermogenesis at a cellular level thus burning the stored fat and leading to weightloss. Green tea extracts also prevent the breakdown of norepinephrine (the hormone that breaksdown fat), decrease levels of leptin (a hormone associated with obesity), suppresses lipid metabolism, reduce the digestibility of dietary fats via inhibition of enzymes required for fat digestion. Is green tea safe? Absolutely. There are incidences of insomnia and increased heart rate due to its Caffeine content but a glass of green tea has far less Caffeine than 8 ounces of coffee!

Read more about the health benefits of green tea on Dr. Rajgopal's blog and website:
http://weightlossdoctor.blogspot.com
http://naturalremedies.weebly.com