The Disadvantages Of The Wu Long Diet

The wu long diet concept is simple -- you add this tea to your daily routine to boost your metabolism and thus burn more calories. You also gain beneficial antioxidants from drinking the tea. As diet supplements go, wu long tea is relatively inexpensive. Also called oolong tea, it's also easy to find at the grocery store and on the Internet. However, this "diet" has disadvantages.

Too Simplistic

While the wu long tea diet is easy to follow, it is also too simplistic. Advocates of this diet do not offer information on proper nutrition. That means you don't learn about key weight-loss concepts like portion control, creating a calorie deficit to lose weight or which foods are healthy and nutrient dense and which do nothing but add unneeded calories to your day. All of these are valuable dieting and weight-loss maintenance tools.

No Exercise

This diet does not include and exercise component. While it is possible to lose weight without exercising, being active boosts your efforts. Exercise also is a large factor in successfully keeping lost weight off. Exercise brings many health benefits with it, including reducing your blood pressure, strengthening your cardiovascular system and improving your mood. It also helps to build lean body mass, which is more metabolically active than fat so burns more calories.

Side Effects

Wu long tea causes potential side effects, mainly due to its caffeine content. These include increased urination, nervousness or restlessness and insomnia. It also can worsen -- or even trigger -- a variety of health conditions. These include irritable bowel syndrome, anxiety disorders, ulcers, gastroesophigal reflux disease, irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure and osteoporosis. You also need to avoid this tea if you have a bleeding disorder or take blood-thinning medications, and to consult a doctor before drinking it if you have an overactive thyroid or a kidney disorder. If you drink too much wu long tea, you may even suffer caffeine poisoning, according to University of Maryland Medical Center. Seek medical attention if you vomit or have abdominal spasms after drinking a large amount of wu long tea.

Large amounts of tea also can reduce the amount of vitamin B1, also called thiamin, in your body due to the way tannic acid reacts with this vitamin. A vitamin B1 deficiency will affect your nervous, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and muscular systems. Wu long tea also may interfere with nonheme iron absorption. This type of iron comes from non-meat sources. Iron deficiency may cause anemia.

Unproven Results

There is no guarantee that drinking wu long tea will cause you to lose weight. Wu long, or oolong, tea comes from the same source as green tea -- the Camellia sinesis plant. Clinical studies on green tea extract's ability to boost metabolism are promising, according to UMMC. However, such studies often combine the tea with additional caffeine. According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine not enough reliable data exists to prove that any sort of green tea preparation will help you lose weight.