Does Green
Tea Help Us to
Cheat?
by Tanya
Zilberter, PhD
The very fact that carb blockers (e.g., the drug Acarbose) are being
prescribed to the diabetics suggests that they were tested in clinics.
Excluding either fats or carbs would make your daily treats much less
dangerous. Of course you can exclude them directly but then you might
feel deprived.
Part 2: How it works. What's on shelves.
click here
Believe it or not, this is a clinically
proven way
to cheat. Though it seems to concern mostly low carb dieters, when you
look into it closely, you see that once in a while anybody can use it.
This is why.
The most dangerous aspect of Holiday eating
is the
food combining aspect. The worst thing you can do to your body is
eating high-fat, high carb foods and lots of them. Excluding either
fats or carbs would make your holiday treats much less dangerous. You
can exclude them directly but you might
feel deprived. Or, you can use the fact that there're means to prevent
fats
or carbs from being digested. This is how.
Let's start with fats. Fat-blockers are well
known
supplements but the problem is, their efficiency is either rather low
(Chitozan) or, in the
case of prescription strength blockers like Orlistat, it comes together
with
completely un-holiday-like side effect. As one of the users put it "If
you
need to go to the bathroom, you have to go there NOW"
Because of this, let's talk about reducing
carbs.
Even if you are nota low-carber, it does make sense to reduce the
excess of them for the holidays.
The idea of so called carb blockers is not a
new
one, far from that. Doctors prescribed them for reducing carbohydrate
digestion of diabetic patients
for quite a while. The drugs work by blocking carbohydrate-converting
enzymes in saliva or/and in the intestines so that carbohydrates would
just pass
through the digestive tract instead of going to the blood and
eventuallyto fat depots.
The very fact that carb blockers (e.g., the
drug
Acarbose) work wellfor the diabetics suggests that they were tested in
clinics. They indeed were. Acarbose produced a statistically
significant reduction in insulin requirement compared with placebo in a
double-blind controlled study.
The above example concerned prescription
drugs,
but how about herbs, do the ywork as well? They do. For instance: hot
teas made of the roots of the Sophora family plants prevented the
increase in blood glucose. The concentration of glucose in the blood
after sugar solution ingestion was 15 times lower when it was ingested
along with Sophora tea than without it.
Some carb blocking drugs (e.g., amylase
inhibitors) work right in the
mouth by preventing the saliva enzyme amylase from starting the
digestion of sugars and starches. But there is a very common herb that
does wonders working the same way, plus being very beneficial for many
other health
conditions. I am talking about green tea.
In a French clinical study, there were two
groups
of overweight women
on the same diet and exercise program. The only difference was, that
women
in one group were instructed to have 6 to 8 cups of green tea a day
while
another did not. In the end of this 8-week program, weight loss
difference reached almost 4 kilograms or about 8,7 lb.
Part 2: How it works. What's on shelves. click here
Sources
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62(6):1225-7, 1998
- Diabetic Medicine. 15(5):393-7, 1998
- Diabetes Research & Clinical
Practice.
28(2):81-7, 1995
- Diabetes, Nutrition & Metabolism -
Clinical
& Experimental. 13(1):7-12, 2000
- Gastroenterology. 91(1):41-8, 1986
- Folia Pharmacologica Japonica.
97(6):329-37,
1991
- American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
70(6):1040-5, 1999<>
- International Journal of Obesity &
Related
Metabolic Disorders. 24(2):252-8, 2000
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