Green tea in liquid or capsule form may lower “bad” or LDL cholesterol levels, a new study suggests, according to Reuters Health.
The study of 1,415 adults showed that participants who consumed green tea had 5 to 6 points shaved off from total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol levels, compared with those in the placebo group or those receiving other treatments.
The researchers gave study participants either a green tea beverage or capsules containing green tea compounds called catechins.
According to Reuters, senior researcher Olivia Phung, an assistant professor of pharmacy at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, Calif., said that liquid green tea was more effective than the capsules, although the overall benefits were rather small.
"If someone is already taking medication for their cholesterol, they should stick with it and not try to trade it for green tea — either capsules or the beverage," she told Reuters Health in an email. But adding green tea to your diet could help you to further improve your cholesterol readings, she added.
While the tea seems more effective in liquid form, there isn't enough data to be sure that the beverage is better than the extract, Phung continued. "We would really need to have some head-to-head studies comparing the different forms of green tea in order to show which ones work more effectively," she told Reuters Health.
This study was published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association
