Green Tea Boosts Endurance and Fat Metabolism

A new study appearing in the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology showed that exercise performance can be increased by up to 24 percent by consuming green tea (the amount consumed was equal to four cups a day for a 165-pound athlete).

It must be noted that the study was funded and conducted by a company that makes green tea products.

The results showed that a single high dose did not induce the increase in performance and fat metabolism. In order to obtain the benefits, one must drink green tea at the suggested rate of four or five cups a day, every day. The duration of the study was ten weeks, which suggests that the effects are cumulative and, as shown in the study, dose-dependent (more is better, up to the suggested four- to five-cup intake).

This study was conducted on mice, so it will be interesting to see if the results can be replicated in human trials. I suspect they will. However, I also suspect that if green tea is shown to be as effective as the pharmaceutical diet drugs, the government will find a way to regulate it (at the urging of the drug giants), just as they did with ephedra.

The FDA is formulating a plan to go after any supplement with "drug-like effects." Mobilizing fatty-acid storage to be burned for energy, as green tea seems to do, might well be considered a drug-like effect and subject green tea extracts to regulations of some sort. Go to Save Our Supplements for more information on how to protect our rights to use supplements.

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