# Green Tea and EGCG



## jaayhou (Jun 20, 2007)

This seems to be all the new rage lately. Most people are aware of some benefit associated with green tea consumption, be it antioxidant effects, disease prevention, or just good health in general. There's been a lot of research in recent years, and the main and the constituent thought to be most beneficial may be EGCG--one of the catechins (a type of polyphenol) found in green tea (for you L-theanine fans, that's in there too). Here's everything you ever wanted to know about green tea in a nice neat summary of peer-reviewed lilterature:

http://www.1fast400.com/i17_Green_Tea_Extract.html

Unlike with most supplements, I've heard that green tea extract taken in capsule form is more beneficial/potent than drinking green tea. This is probably because you'd have to drink multiple cups to get the same benefit of a single capsule. The above article recommends 400mg daily taken in a single dose for maximum benefit. After some shopping around, I picked up #200 capsules (120mg EGCG per capsule) from GNC for about $35. The directions only indicate one dose daily, so I'm not sure what to believe. I'm actually pretty skeptical of supplements, as I take only fish oil and the occasional vit C, but no multivitamin or anything else.

Anyway, is anyone a fan of green tea? Those Asians must be on to something, living for 100+ years and all.


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## X33 (Feb 13, 2005)

I only recently started drinking lots (2-4 cups/day) of green tea because I read that it helps improve your memory among other things. How much catechins do you reckon a cup of green tea contains?


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## jaayhou (Jun 20, 2007)

http://chinesefood.about.com/library/we ... 11400b.htm - "there are approximately 240 - 320 mg of polyphenols in three cups of green tea"

And, according to the other article I posted, about 50% of these polyphenols are EGCG. That works out to about 40-53 mg EGCG per cup. Personally, it's a struggle for me to drink a cup of any kind of tea, especially green tea.


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## X33 (Feb 13, 2005)

Thanks for posting the article. It contains good info. 
Since you seem to have done some research on this topic, have you come across any cognitive benefits of green tea? In the first site you posted, the focus seems to be on weight loss (which is no surprise, considering the marketabilty of a weight loss product). I do remember reading about epicatechins from green tea and their cognitive benefits but since this was awhile ago, I don't recall specific.


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## jaayhou (Jun 20, 2007)

True...90% of the stores in which you'll find green tea extract will market it as a weight loss supplement, as that's what's selling these days. I don't know much about the cognitive benefits, other than that the Chinese seem to have used it historically for anti-depressant benefits.


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## nightmahr (Jan 2, 2008)

I've drunk several cups a day for the past 3 years or more and it doesn't seem to have helped. Maybe the extract would do more though. I might give that a try. I only knew about the antioxidant effect and that it's supposed to block DHT a bit, but it's nice to have another good reason to drink or take more. I love tea.


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## Beggiatoa (Dec 25, 2004)

Green tea is awsome. However, the active ingredient is not very bioavailable. To really get this into your body, you have to drink this with some kind of fat (tastes horrible if you disolve the capsules) Otherwise, it just accumulates in your gut.

So, take the pills with fish oil, for example. Or after a meal that contained fat (typically all meals! lol)


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## Wellington (Dec 29, 2007)

http://www.iherb.com/ProductDetails.asp ... =1105&at=0
Probably the best price you'll find for EGCG (200mg per pill). Iherb rocks.


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## jaayhou (Jun 20, 2007)

Thanks for that link. Me thinks they'll be getting my business next time rather than GNC.


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