Green Tea is said to be the panacea of all problems. Be it burning fat , fighting heart diseases, keeping blood pressure in check , Green Tea seems like a Sanjeevni booti in this kalyug. But, have you ever wondered , what makes green tea possess these medicinal properties . Here is the answer to “What makes green tea healthy ? “

For green tea, the tea leaves are harvested from the Camellia sinensis plant and are then quickly heated — by pan firing or steaming — and dried to prevent too much oxidation from occurring that would turn the green leaves brown and alter their fresh-picked flavor.Since, the green tea leaves do not go through an oxidizing process, so the leaves contain so-called “non-oxidised phenolic compounds”, such as catechins. Green tea increases metabolism rate & helps you to burn fat as the polyphenol found in green tea works to intensify levels of fat oxidation and the rate at which your body turns food into calories.

When starch is consumed, it requires the enzyme amylase to break it down into simple sugars that can be absorbed in the bloodstream.Green tea polyphenols inhibit amylase, and so can help lower blood sugar levels. High blood levels of glucose and insulin predispose people to diabetes.

A major cause of hypertension (high blood pressure) is an enzyme secreted by the kidneys called angiotension- converting enzyme (ACE).Popular drugs for hypertension act as ACE inhibitors: by blocking the effects of ACE, blood pressure is reduced. Green tea is a natural ACE inhibitor, and several medical studies show lowered blood pressure in animals and humans given green tea extracts. Also, Green tea reduces bad cholesterol in the blood and improves the ratio of good cholesterol to bad cholesterol.

Originally published on Wordpress