Why You Should Drink Green Tea

We often talk about tea on this joggling blog because it seems to have some great benefits.

Plus, I’m too YOUNG for coffee.

Previously we discussed the reasons why drinking tea is better than water. We even saw that drinking tea plus exercising can help prevent skin cancer. But this bit of research might even provide the best reason juggling runners should be drinking tea.

Green tea boosts your endurance 8-24% and helps you burn fat. In fact, you’ll see results in 10 weeks so it would make a perfect drink to supplement your next marathon training program.

The Tea Endurance Study

The researchers conducted two similar studies. First, they measured the swimming endurance capacity of 40 mice. Then they divided the mice into four groups of 10 mice each. One group was given a normal diet, one group was given green tea extract (GTE) of 0.2% in their food and another group was given 0.5% GTE in their food. The fourth group was given a normal diet but didn’t get regular exercise. They worked them out regularly over a 10 week period and measured the change in their endurance capacity.

Here’s what they found for swimming endurance after 10 weeks

Group 1 – no exercise, no tea supplement : endurance = 26 min
Group 2 – exercise, no tea supplement : endurance = 33 min
Group 3 – exercise, 0.5% tea supplement : endurance = 40 min

No results available for the 0.2% group.

How much tea to drink

Ok, this study was on mice but things tend to correlate pretty well when it comes to exercise tests. So, if you wanted to try this out you’ll need to drink a pretty good amount of green tea every day. According to the authors, an athlete that weighs 165 pounds (75 kg) would have to drink 4 cups (0.8 liters) of green tea a day. Since I’m about 20 pounds heavier, I’ll have to drink 1 liter of green tea each day.

With just under 4 weeks left before the 50-mile joggling world record try it’s certainly worth trying. It should be easy because I already drink about a liter of black tea daily. You winter-time triathletes and marathoners like Wes and Fran should give it a try.