Green tea has been enjoyed as a beverage in the East for thousands of years. It is only recently that scientists have been able to show that green tea is truly one of the healthiest beverages on the planet!
Green tea is loaded with antioxidants and nutrients that boost brain function, fight fatigue, lower your weight and so much more.
Let’s dive right into the benefits of this amazing drink.
How Green Tea Helps With Weight Loss and Athletic Performance
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Green tea has been shown to increase fat burning and boost your metabolic rate in multiple trials. One study showed that fat oxidation was increased by 17%! This shows that green tea may selectively burn fat, which is pretty incredible for this humble drink.
Caffeine itself has also been shown to have this effect, by recruiting fatty acids from the fat tissues and allowing the body to use them as necessary.
Have you ever wondered why caffeine is banned from many athletic events? This is because caffeine has been shown to increase physical performance by 11% on average!
So drink some green tea before and run and watch as the fat disappears.
Green Tea Fights Cancer
Cancer, the scourge of the 20th century. Cancer has seen a huge uptick in incidence over the last 50 – 100 years, and many people blame that on our diets filled with fat, sugars and empty calories.
Green tea is an incredible source of antioxidants that have a protective effect on the body against cancer. In several studies, green tea was shown to reduce breast cancer incidence by 22%, prostate cancer by 48%, colorectal cancer by 57%.
So eat healthy and add green tea to your daily regimen as it has been scientifically shown to reduce cancer rates.
Improve Blood Flow For A Healthy Heart
Green tea has been shown to improve blood flow and also lower cholesterol in studies. It has been shown to help prevent many heart diseases, including high blood pressure and congestive heart failure.
Improving blood flow benefits all aspects of your body as well, including your brain. One studied showed that green tea aficionados had greater activity in the working memory regions of their brain, which has been shown to correlate to higher IQ.
Additionally, green tea also slows the development of Alzheimer’s, by helping to block the formation of plaques in the brain that cause the disease.
Get Relaxed
Stress is bad for every aspect of the body, and reducing stress can really extend that health and happiness of your life. Drinking tea helps you to slow down and relax, as each calming sip brings you more into the moment.
Green tea is also a source of a natural chemical called theanine, which has been shown to produce a calming effect as well.
As you can see, green tea is delicious and comes with a huge host of health benefits that we could all use.
How To Properly Brew Green Tea
Here’s some tips to brewing your next cup perfectly!
- Don’t steep your tea with boiling water. Keep it around 160 or 170 to prevent damaging the catechins, the healthy chemicals in the tea.
- Try it with some lemon to increase the absorptive properties of the catechins and make them more bioavailable. Avoid milk has it inhibits the absorption of catechins.
- Steep the tea for around 1 to 2 minutes for full flavor and release of healthy chemicals.
- Loose leaf tea leaves can be reused 2 to 3 times before discarding
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Hey! My name is Stephen and I’m the owner of Ultimate Core Health. Since we started, we’ve grown into a trusted resource for unbiased, science-based articles and reviews on fitness, nutrition and supplements. Check me out on social media, feel free to add me if you want to talk health!
