Weight Loss from Black Tea?

Moneylife Digital Team 18 October 2017

Life

Weight Loss from Black Tea?

Could it be that black tea may promote weight loss by changing bacteria in the gut? In a study of mice, scientists at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) have found that black tea alters energy metabolism in the liver by changing gut metabolites. The study, published in the European Journal of Nutrition, found that both, black and green tea, changed the ratio of intestinal bacteria in animals. Apparently, this led to a fall in the ratio of bacteria associated with obesity and, at the same time, bacteria associated with lean body mass increased. In the study, four groups of mice were given four different sets of diets. One was given low-fat, high-sugar and the other high-fat, high-sugar. A third set of mice got the same as the first with added extract of green tea. And a fourth set of mice got the same diet as the second with added extract of black tea. When measured after four weeks, the weight of mice that were given green or black tea extracts was down to the same levels as those that were given the low-fat diet.

“The results suggest that both green and black teas are prebiotics, substances that induce the growth of good micro-organisms that contribute to a person’s well-being,” said Susanne Henning, the study’s lead author and an adjunct professor at the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition. “Our new findings suggest that black tea, through a specific mechanism through the gut microbiome, may also contribute to good health and weight loss in humans.”

Dr Zhaoping Li, director of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition, chief of the UCLA Division of Clinical Nutrition and the study’s senior author, was quoted as saying that the findings suggest that the health benefits of both, green tea and black tea, go beyond their antioxidant benefits, and that both teas have a strong impact on the gut microbiome.

Get Lean, Cure Diabetes

A report published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) says that type-2 diabetes can be controlled if patients lose 12kg-15kg or so. Type-2 diabetes is considered incurable; but evidence is growing that it is curable if certain steps are taken, according to a study headed by Professor Mike Lean of Glasgow University’s Human Nutrition Section. Prof Lean points out that, currently, 488 drugs are licensed worldwide to treat type-2 diabetes by lowering blood glucose levels. “They are not treating the disease process,” he said. He was quoted as saying that “Not only is type-2 diabetes preventable by not getting fat, but as long as you get in early after the disease is established—in the first five years or so—you have a better than even chance of becoming non-diabetic.” This information is hardly known, because “it is rarely recorded officially.” Type-2 diabetes now affects 5%-10% of the UK population and about 10% of total National Health Service expenditure in that country goes into treating the condition.

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