Health Benefits Of Green Tea

If you’re getting ready to start up on a health promoting nutrition program, one thing that you need to learn is the benefits of green tea.  When it comes to hydration, for most people, their day goes a little like this…

They wake up, down a cup or two of coffee, sometimes black, sometimes laced with whipped topping and many high calorie syrups.

From there, they may go in for one more cup mid-morning until lunch hits when they treat themselves to a diet coke – they are, after all, watching their weight.

They get caught up with work during the afternoon hours and fail to take in anything further to drink until they come home and have a cold beer or glass of wine as they prepare dinner. Or, perhaps for the non-drinkers out there, they stop off for a fruit smoothie after work to tide them over for their workout session.

If this sounds even remotely like your day, you’re making some grave mistakes. Not only are you not staying hydrated, you’re not doing anything to promote your health either.

That’s why Green tea is so superior. Not only will it help you meet your hydration needs, but it also offers a number of health benefits that go beyond hydration.

Remember that staying adequately hydrated throughout the day will help to increase your energy levels, maintain better concentration and focus throughout the day, and ensure that you are cleansing the body and making the kidneys and liver function more efficiently.

Hydration is a must.

All of this said, let’s go over what some of the other health benefits of green tea are that you should keep in mind.

Antioxidant Support

The first of the benefits of green tea is that it will provide you with strong antioxidant support. Each and every day you are going to encounter a number of free radicals, which cause oxidative damage to the body.

Over time, as oxidation builds and builds, this can then lead to serious health concerns such as cancer. At the lowest of levels, oxidation can make you feel worn out and hamper your immune system, so this isn’t something that you can afford to take lightly.

Drinking a few cups of green tea each day will provide you with a very highly concentrated source of antioxidants, which combat all these free radicals causing this damage.

Green tea has just as many, if not more, antioxidants than most fruits or vegetables, making it a highly potent source.

Energy Enhancement

We already discussed the fact that simply staying hydrated will help to boost your energy, so this is already one of the benefits of green tea that you should know.

Beyond that however, green tea also contains a very small dose of caffeine, which will further help to liven you up and boost your concentration level.

The nice thing however about green tea as opposed to coffee is that the caffeine content isn’t quite as high, therefore you won’t experience the rapid energy spike followed by crash.

This means that you’ll get a nice boost to your energy level, but from there, you’ll just slowly come down off of it.

As most people have already experienced what a caffeine crash feels like, this is one benefit that most will highly appreciate.

Mild doses of caffeine can also offer other further benefits as well such as improved circulation as well as better blood glucose control. This can help you feel better on a day to day basis, avoiding those blood sugar spikes and crashes.

Cardiovascular Health Benefits

Moving along, another of the benefits of green tea to know about is that it will help to promote better cardiovascular health as well.

Those who drink at least two cups of green tea per day have a lower risk of suffering from cardiovascular disease and also help to decrease their risk of other related heart problems as well.

If you’ve recently been told by your doctor that you need to be making improvements in this area of your health, adding some green tea to your diet is definitely something that you will want to consider.

Additionally, if the green tea is replacing other beverages that you may be drinking regularly that only put you at a greater heart-health risk such as beer or high fat milkshakes, smoothies, or gourmet coffees, you’ll see benefits in that regard as well.

Metabolic Enhancement

If you are currently working towards the goal of losing body fat, another of the benefits of green tea that will be highly applicable to you is metabolic enhancement.

The faster your metabolism is running throughout the day, the easier it is going to be for you to melt fat all day long. Those who focus on increasing their metabolism rather than just cutting out more and more food from their diets are most definitely going to see better results and enjoy the process that much more.

Adding green tea assists with this.

A few cups per day can get you burning up more calories 24/7, so this can work well as you strive to lower your body fat.

Calorie Free!

Finally, last but not least, let’s not forget one of the most important benefits of green tea, the fact that it’s calorie free.

Staying hydrated with just water does get boring from time to time, so green tea will help to liven things up a bit, but won’t add any calories like other beverages do.

It is important that you are avoiding taking in beverages that do contain calories as most often they are not going to be providing any satiety and causing you to reduce back on your food consumption.

So if you drink calorie laden beverages, you may just suffer weight gain because your calorie intake has now increased significantly.

There you have some of the greatest benefits of green tea that you must remember. If you currently are not adding this beverage into your diet plan, now is the time to start.