Green tea weight loss should also improve key biochemical indicators of good health. Research shows some surprise bonuses when EGCG bioavailability is also improved. Here is what you can expect..
.
.
Basic Research on Green Tea Weight Loss
The research that I want to call your attention to was published in this journal article:
Di Pierro, F., Menghi A.B., Barreca, A., Lucarelli, M, and Calandrelli, A. 2009. Greenselect Phytosome as an adjunct to a low-calorie diet for treatment of obesity: a clinical trial. Alternative Medicine Review 14(2):154-160.
Earlier posts explained the development of technology to enhance the bioavailability of green tea extracts and how it boosted the results of the clinical weight loss trial here:
Green Tea Weight Loss – The Real Science
Boosting Green Tea Weight Loss
By the way, if you want to see the complete article, it is available for free through PubMed, here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19594224
In fact, I recommend that you take a look at the complete article to see the depth of detail that is missing from the abstract. The main result relates to the purpose of the study, which was to determine the effects of a certain green tea extract on weight loss.
Expected Benefits
Based on prior research on green tea, particularly on EGCG, we can expect certain biochemistry to improve, such as total cholesterol (TC), fasting blood sugar (BS), and total triglycerides (TT), as shown in Table 3:
Surprise Benefits
Certain changes may not have been a complete surprise to the researchers, because they took the trouble to make before and after measurements of these health indicators. However, not all of these results are general knowledge for those who use green tea to lose weight. We may have expected improvements in LDL and HDL levels. However, the 321% increase in levels of human growth hormone (GH) is an unexpected bonus. See Table 4 here:
Hormones that are intimately intertwined with human growth hormone include insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) and insulin. All of these are protein hormones. Indeed, IGF-1 is a more reliable indicator of GH activity, since GH levels spike several times per day and its cohort, IGF-1, does not. The change in cortisol levels reflects the beneficial influence of EGCG on steroid metabolism. See Table 5 here:
The really cool result would seem to be that GH levels increased by 321 percent over the starting point. However spectacular this seems, it may mean very little. However, the 24 percent increase in IGF-1 is truly something to get excited about. Note also that a reduced calorie diet by itself even led to a 15 percent increase in this hormone. That observation alone should tell you that eating too much is probably harmful to proper hormone balance. It suggests a link to the already established knowledge about wild hormone imbalance in the obese.
Updating green tea weight loss research,
Dr. D
Dear Dennis,
Thank you very much for all your info.
Your belly fat loss was good. Now I eat dinner arround 6pm and breakfeast at 6-8 am and it feels real good. I`ve also been drinking a lot of green tee and it´s great that you´ve posted these studies to reasure me to keep on having the tea. I´ve lost some weight which has been very hard for me. I weigh 105kg and am 180cm tall and I can`t shake the weight off even that I´ve been eating under 2000Cal.
Things are going great and you got it going.
Thanks again,
Juha Kajukorpi
Helsinki, Finland
Thank you for your kind comments, Juha. There are so many good things that you can still do to get to your ideal body weight and body fat percentage. The clearest thinkers and best researchers are finding that calorie restriction is the least effective approach. If anything, intermittent fasting would be much better. I’m going to be exploring this in more depth in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, take a look at this recent post: High Fructose Corn Syrup – Deadliest Food Additives. I will have equally important comments on wheat soon, too. At the moment, the best and easiest long-term strategy is to get all wheat products and all products containing high fructose corn syrup out of your diet for good. When you do that, you will be amazed at what happens to your body. Good luck!
All the best,
Dennis
Dr Clark , u mention about excluding all wheat
products from ones diet, but does wheat grass
count as a wheat product on the same par?
Juicing wheatgrass is supposed to be healthy,
si now I am a bit confused. Please give us your
take in that.
Thank you
Hi, Elizabeth:
No, the gluten and starch in wheat grains are storage products. The leaves (i.e., ‘grass’) do not contain these storage products.
All the best,
Dennis
Dr Clark
I would like to incorporate the green tea phytosome into my supplement regimen and was wondering what the dosage amount should be per day and frequency and is there a recommended brand?
thanks
David