Green Tea: The Miracle Drink?

Ok, so the title of this post is pushing it a little bit. I still think that Green Tea has some great benefits. Last week I shared the World's Healthiest Foods link in a post, and this week I want to use some information from that site for this post.

Since I first tried it, I have been a fan of the health benefits of green tea. I've felt much better after I've had some and I've noticed a huge impact in another area. Most people who know me probably don't know that I take my resting heart rate in the morning as it is a good indication of how my body is doing on that particular day - a slower rate generally means that my body is fitter and more able to do hard aerobic work. Though I have done no study to isolate the effects of green tea, I have noticed that if I have green tea for a few days in a row, my heart rate gets slower and if I forget to have green tea for a few days my heart rate goes up. There are several other factors at play with a resting heart rate (and it could be the caffeine in the green tea and not necessarily the green tea itself), so I have not drawn too many large conclusions from my basic observations.

Until now, that is. When doing research for the above mentioned post, I looked at the research on green tea and found that it had been updated since the last time I had checked it. Here is one part that I thought was particularly interesting (and you will finally figure out how this post relates to sports):

Green tea extract given to lab rats over a 10-week span increased the amount of time the animals could swim before becoming exhausted by as much as 24%.

Green tea's catechins appear to stimulate the use of fatty acids by liver and muscle cells. In muscle cells, the ability to burn more fat translates into a reduction in the rate at which glycogen, the form in which carbohydrates are stored for ready access in muscle, is used up, thus allowing for longer exercise times. Green tea's effect on muscle cells' ability to take in and burn fatty acids, speeding up fat breakdown, is also thought to be the reason why it helps weight loss.

The idea for the experiment came from the fact that skeletal muscles utilize carbohydrates, lipids (fats) and amino acids (protein) as energy sources, but the ratio in which they are used varies with the intensity and type of the exercise, and the level of the individual's fitness. During endurance exercise, the use of too much carbohydrate is undesirable because it triggers insulin secretion, which, in turn, both inhibits the burning of fatty acids and stimulates lactic acid production. (Lactic acid buildup is what causes that sore achy feeling in your muscles when you exercise.) Conversely, enhanced availability and utilization of free fatty acids reduces carbohydrate utilization, which in turn spares glycogen (the form in which carbohydrates are stored in muscle for quick use) and suppresses lactic acid production, resulting in an increase in endurance.

Drinking a single cup of green tea before exercise, however, will not be effective. One single, higher "dose" of green tea did nothing to improve lab rats' performance. The animals had to receive green tea daily, and endurance increased gradually over the 10 weeks of the study. To match the beneficial effect on test animals' endurance capacity seen in the experiments, the researchers estimate a 165-pound athlete would need to drink about 4 cups of green tea daily.

This information could be interesting to anyone trying to get in shape for that half marathon or marathon. Or even someone who wants to play pickup hockey. Either way, green tea has many other benefits as seen in the rest of the page where the above quote came from. Check it out and perhaps you will start enjoying the many flavours of green tea that are out there.

Just a word of caution though, check labels thoroughly and make conscious decisions when buying tea.