The Wu Long Diet involves drinking at least six cups of Wu Long tea on a daily basis, especially as a way to lose weight and keep that weight off. Wu Long tea is also known as Oolong tea, as well as Wulong tea. According to the Jing Tea official website, it is the quantity of polyphenols found in Wu Long tea that inhibit the absorption of triglycerides in your body. However, Dr. Budd of the University of California believes it is the saponins contained in the leaves.
Positive Outcome of Research from Ehime University in Japan
Evidence is building up about the efficacy of the Wu Long Diet. The results obtained from research carried out in 1999 at Ehime University in Japan appear to indicate that the Wu Long Diet really does contribute to definitive weight loss. This study was carried out using laboratory rats, involving them being fed on a high fat diet for 10 weeks. This was a randomized trial; some rats were given Wu Long tea to drink and others were give water.
Despite the rats eating the same quantities of food over those 10 weeks, the group drinking Wu Long tea did not become obese, nor did they accumulate excess fat in their livers. This led the scientists to conclude that Wu Long tea was a suitable diet source that operated through a process of lipolysis, or fat-burning, as well as absorption of fat.
Lipolysis and Fat Absorption
Fat is stored in your body in the form of triglycerides. When energy is needed these triglycerides are converted from fat into energy through the process of lipolysis. Wu Long tea was found to encourage more efficient lipolysis to occur, effectively reducing the amount of triglycerides stored in your body as fat.
Any fatty foods you eat passes through to your small intestines where a special enzyme known as lipase breaks down the large fat molecule, enabling digestion to occur more easily. It was found during the research involving rats that drinking Wu Long tea prevented lipase from being able to work.
This reduced dietary fat from being digested and absorbed through the intestinal walls. The results of this study carried out by scientists at Ehime University were published in the "International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders," appearing in the January 1999 edition.
The Wu Long Diet Shows Promise
At University of Tokushima evidence from another study revealed that Wu Long tea encourages the excretion of fat, increasing fat excretion twice that of normal. This is thought to account for the Asian habit of eating fatty pork at breakfast time, accompanied by Wu Long tea. Instead of piling the pounds on as you would expect, these people were noticed to remain lithe and lean.
From the results obtained during their research the scientists at the University of Tokushima concluded that when Wu Long tea was drunk as an accompaniment to a meal high in fats, a higher proportion of lipids were excreted into the feces than if the high fat meal was accompanied by a similar quantity of water as a drink. This research was published in the "European Journal of Clinical Nutrition" in the November 2006 edition.
Keeping the Fat Off
One of the more difficult aspects of weight loss is maintaining your new, healthy weight afterwards. Again, this is another benefit of the Wu Long Diet. Evidence about Wu Long tea's beneficial effect on reducing triglycerides was established in the 1999 study by Ehime University. However, a more recent study in 2007 by Dr. Lauren Budd and her research team from the University of California established that rats with a propensity to obesity had an 80 percent lower triglyceride level, as well as reducing their weight gain by 66 percent.
During this study the rats consumed the equivalent of 6 cups of Oolong tea a day. Their findings were reported in the "FASEB Journal" in 2007. Dr. Budd and her colleagues suggest this lowered fat absorption was due to the presence of saponins found in the leaves of Oolong Tea.
Fat-Reducing Effects of Saponins
This link between saponins and lowered absorption of fat, in the form of cholesterol, was the subject of Dr. Rene Malinow's research, the results of which were published in 1997 in the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition." Summing up his findings, saponins were found to work in a similar way to the drug Cholestyramine, a cholesterol-lowering drug. In effect, the saponins bound to the bile acids and cholesterol, preventing the cholesterol from being absorbed into the intestine. This interesting study could well tie up with Dr. Budd's suggestion that saponins in the leaves of Oolong tea reduced the amount of fat being absorbed.
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