Study: Green tea extract may improve strength, endurance, fat-metabolism

We already know that drinking green tea is very healthy. Now researchers in Japan have shown that green tea extract may boost endurance, increase strength, and help you burn fat more efficiently...

From CBSNews.com:

Is green tea the secret to Mighty Mouse's amazing power?

Probably not. But green tea extract does make mice stronger swimmers, Japanese researchers report. Ten weeks of green tea supplements plus strenuous exercise made mice swim longer and stronger than mice that swam their laps without performance enhancement.

"We have shown that green tea extracts are beneficial for improving endurance capacity, and that this effect is accompanied by a stimulation of [fat] metabolism," Takatoshi Murase, PhD, writes. "Although the clinical efficacy of green tea extract has not yet been confirmed in human studies, our results suggest that green tea extract may be a useful tool for improving endurance capacity."

Even better news: The mice got stronger because the green tea made them burn fat more efficiently, suggests Murase and colleagues at the Biological Sciences Laboratories of Kao Corp., Tochigi, Japan. Kao Corp. is a maker of green tea products.

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