Green Tea Anyone? If your office or home is anything like #MuscleGenes #HQ, you undoubtedly go through thousands of cups of tea and coffee a week. However, have you ever considered swapping your regular hot drink for a mug of Green Tea? Many people already have and when you consider its health benefits, its easy to see why. Health Benefits of Green Tea: • Increase metabolic rate • Decrease body fat levels • Improve exercise performance • Promote a healthy heart and vascular system • Combat some cancers All these health benefits are a result of ‘Catechins’, which are active polyphenols found in Green Tea. The most important catechin in delivering these benefits appears to be epigallocatechin-gallate (EGCG). Studies show that as little as 90mg of EGCG, three times daily can cause significant fat loss activity. Although black tea has health properties too, it hasn’t been proven to aid weight loss or exercise performance and it has a much lower concentration of catechins than the green variety. However, not all Green Tea brands contain the same levels of catechins. Levels of catechins depend upon the soil, weather, strain of tea leaf, etc. during the farming process, so it pays to do a little bit of research into what you’re buying first to make sure you get the most from it. A study released just a few weeks ago showed showed that catechin concentrations can vary between 4-70% and and polyphenol concentrations between 4 and 96% when comparing brands. Here are four different brands of Green Tea that were tested for their levels of Catechins: Celestial Seasoning Authentic Green Tea: 105.7 Lipton Green Tea: 84.3 Uncle Lees Green Tea: 76.7 Bigelow Darjeeling Blend: 68.1 So as you can see, Green Tea can be extremely beneficial to your overall health, as well as your training performance. But what if you’re not a tea drinker and don’t want to miss out on these benefits? Don’t worry! Green Tea can also be bought in capsule form so you can still get your fill of Catechins. Remember: When making your Green Tea, let the bag brew in the cup for a good 2 – 3 minutes before removing it so you don’t miss out on the Polyphenols! And your interaction with this post would be most appreciated - especially shares, we love shares! :-) #MGNation
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 10:31:20 +0000
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