There are those who claim that green tea is the "Natural Ozempic”. Science has a clear verdict

Finding natural versions of widely used drugs has become common. Of course that includes the trendy drug, and the latest candidate for “natural Ozempic” is green tea.

Is there any truth to this?

Green tea is a beverage with several potential health benefits, but the comparison with Ozempic usually comes from somewhere else: your potential to facilitate the process of losing weightthe property that has skyrocketed the popularity of this drug to the point of endangering its supply to people with diabetes on whom it was initially focused.

And Ozempic is perhaps the closest we have come to the “miracle treatment” for losing weight. The slimming effect of this drug, whose active compound is semaglutide, is due to several factors.

Semaglutide is an agonist of GLP-1 receptors (glucagon-like peptide type 1), which means that it behaves in our body in a similar way to the hormone GLP-1. This hormone is secreted by our digestive system when we eat and performs two functions. The first is to regulate the insulin that we produce and that our body will need to assimilate the sugars that we have consumed.

The second function of this hormone, and the key to its “slimming” effect, is that it also interacts with our brain, letting us know that we are satiated. It also affects that among the side effects of the drug are nausea and vomiting.

Tea also has properties that can help us control our weight, but If we want to give it the “Ozempic natural” distinction these would have to show some kind of parallelism with the drug. Whether in the magnitude of this slimming potential, or in the way in which these two compounds interact with our body.

If the slimming properties of tea were comparable in magnitude to those of Ozempic and other analogous drugs, it is unlikely that we would be talking about these treatments in the first place since we would already have a cheap and accessible tool to achieve the same results.

Scientific studies support this. In 2012, the Cochrane Bookstore (dedicated to the review of scientific literature) published a meta-analysisa quantitative study that condenses the results of previous studies, focused on green tea and its slimming effects. The authors concluded that the works analyzed showed that “green tea preparations seem to induce a small weight loss [y] not significant.”

To this they added that, due to the small magnitude, it was unlikely that the effect was “clinically important.” The team also noted that they found no evidence that tea helped maintain weight. On the other hand, only one relevant case of adverse effects derived from the consumption of green tea that required hospitalization was found.

How green tea works

Although green tea consumption does not have a clinically relevant effect on weight loss and control, we can also study how it interacts with our body to produce these potential changes.

The diuretic effect of tea or the feeling of satiety generated by consuming a low-calorie drink, its potential to accelerate metabolic processes and its caffeine content are possible explanations to this potential effect slimming, although these mechanisms have little to do with the operation of Ozempic and analogous drugs.

However, there is a study that can help us resolve the doubt. Was published in 2014 in the magazine PloS Oneand addressed the relationship between green tea and type 2 diabetes. To conduct the trial, the team conducted a randomized, double-blind experiment in which the 92 study participants were administered either a green tea extract or a placebo.

When analyzing the results, the team observed a significant reduction in triglycerides and insulin resistance. However, the effects on GLP-1 hormone levels were limitedleading the team to suggest that these effects should be studied in greater depth before drawing conclusions. It should be remembered that a green tea extract does not have to have the same effects as consuming the infused plant.

A possible explanation for why we have the sensation of losing weight is in the circumstances in which we consume this infusion. The apparent correlation between green tea consumption and weight loss may be real and does not mean that there must be a cause-effect relationship. Come on, correlation does not imply cause.

For example, it could be explained by other measures that a person is implementing to lose weight. If we consume green tea, it is also possible that we are taking care of our diet in other ways, which in turn could be causing us to lose weight.

In Xataka | Ozempic to lose weight: its effects and risks beyond the controversy, according to science

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