Can drinking tea help burn fat and lose weight? Study: Two cups of oolong tea a day increases fat metabolism rate during sleep

Drink a cup of tea after a meal to remove oil and greasiness! Some people even choose to drink tea to burn fat and lose weight; however, some people suffer from insomnia due to drinking too much tea, and insufficient sleep may also reduce energy metabolism. How can you increase metabolism by drinking tea without suffering from insomnia? Recently, a foreign study found that if you want to lose weight by drinking tea, you might as well drink a cup of oolong tea in the morning and at noon. It may help the body continue to metabolize fatty acids when you fall asleep!

Study: Drinking 2 cups of oolong tea a day can help promote fat metabolism during sleep

In order to further understand whether the key to helping fat metabolism during sleep is related to drinking oolong tea to ingest ingredients such as caffeine or catechins, a study conducted by Professor Dr. Kumpei Tokuyama and his research team from the International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine, University of Tsukuba, Japan, and published in Nutrients, pointed out that the ingredient that helps lipid metabolism during sleep does not seem to be caffeine. It was also found that drinking 2 cups of oolong tea a day can promote the metabolism of human fat during sleep.

The experiment was conducted in a double-blind manner. The researchers selected 12 healthy men aged between 20 and 56 years old, whose BMI was within the normal range and who did not take any medications or health supplements. They also excluded those who consumed 300 mg of caffeine per day as subjects. First, the first experimental process was that the researchers gave 51.8 mg of pure caffeine in a beverage can to the subjects at 8 am and 12 noon. After two weeks of the experimental process, they used indirect calorimetry to find that when the subjects were taking pure caffeine, the fatty acid metabolism rate increased by 20% compared to when they did not take caffeine. However, when observing the metabolic status during sleep, there was no phenomenon that pure caffeine continued to promote fatty acid metabolism.

The study found that the subjects who drank oolong tea continued to metabolize fatty acids during sleep without affecting sleep

After another two weeks, the subjects performed the second process. The researchers gave the subjects oolong tea (containing 51.8 mg of caffeine and 48.5 mg of catechins) in beverage cans. It was found that after the experiment, the fatty acid metabolism rate of the subjects not only increased by 20%, but also the effect of promoting fatty acid metabolism was not interrupted during sleep. In addition, the researchers also found that after drinking oolong tea, the subjects' sleep condition was not disturbed by the ingredients in it. A polysomnography (PSG) sleep examination showed that there was no difference in sleep condition between the process of drinking oolong tea and the process of drinking placebo.

Study: Drinking 2 cups of oolong tea a day can help promote fat metabolism during sleep

In addition, energy consumption was estimated by measuring the carbon dioxide and nitrogenous waste in the subjects' bodies. It was finally found that during the process of drinking oolong tea, the subjects' respiratory quotient (RQ) was significantly lower than that of the other two groups, and the respiratory quotient (carbon dioxide production/oxygen consumption) decreased, which means that the metabolic rate increased.

Sleeping 8 hours a day can help your body burn more calories

In addition, Professor Kumpei Tokuyama also pointed out that sleep is also a very important part for people who want to lose weight. If you sleep for 8 hours a day, your body will burn 22% more calories than if you only sleep for 5 hours. Research has found that oolong tea promotes fat metabolism during sleep, which may have clinical significance for weight control.

However, since the experiment lasted only two weeks, it was not enough to observe the impact of drinking oolong tea on long-term weight changes. The researchers do not rule out conducting longer studies in the future, and would like to use decaffeinated oolong tea for experiments in order to more accurately analyze which component in oolong tea can promote fat decomposition.