Green Tea Fights Fat

Green tea ingredient may promote healthy weight loss

Need another healthy reason to drink green tea? Aside from fighting heart disease, cancer, and other diseases, a new study shows that drinking green tea may also fight fat.

The study showed that people who drank a bottle of tea fortified with green tea extract every day for three months lost more body fat than those who drank a bottle of regular oolong tea.

Researchers say the results indicate that substances found in green tea known as catechins may trigger weight loss by stimulating the body to burn calories and decreasing body fat.

The findings appear in the January issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Green Tea: Fat Fighter?

Black tea, oolong tea, and green tea come from the same Camellia sinensis plant. But unlike the other two varieties, green tea leaves are not fermented before steaming and drying.

Most teas contain large amounts of polyphenols, which are plant-based substances that have been shown to have antioxidant, anticancer, and antiviral properties.

However, green tea is particularly rich in a type of polyphenols called catechins. These substances have also been shown to have anti-inflammatory and anticancer properties, but recent research in animals show that catechins may also affect body fat accumulation and cholesterol levels.

In this study, researchers looked at the effects of catechins on body fat reduction and weight loss in a group of 35 Japanese men. The men had similar weights based on their BMI (body mass index, an indicator of body fat) and waist sizes.

The men were divided into two groups. For three months, the first group drank a bottle of oolong tea fortified with green tea extract containing 690 milligrams of catechins, and the other group drank a bottle of oolong tea with 22 milligrams of catechins.

During this time, the men ate identical breakfasts and dinners and were instructed to control their calorie and fat intake at all times so that overall total diets were similar.

After three months, the study showed that the men who drank the green tea extract lost more weight (5.3 pounds vs. 2.9 pounds) and experienced a significantly greater decrease in BMI, waist size, and total body fat.

In addition, LDL "bad" cholesterol went down in the men who drank the green tea extract.

The catechin content varies by amount of green tea used and steeping time. But general recommendations, based on previous studies on the benefits of green tea, are at least 4 cups a day. Green tea extract supplements are also available.

Researchers say the results indicate that catechins in green tea not only help burn calories and lower LDL cholesterol but may also be able to mildly reduce body fat.

"These results suggest that catechins contribute to the prevention of and improvement in various lifestyle-related diseases, particularly obesity," write researcher Tomonori Nagao of Health Care Products Research Laboratories in Tokyo, and colleagues.

Corporate/B2B Web Design - 5 tips

It is often difficult for a corporate to justify the costs of website design. There are all sorts of arguments that can be levied against spending money on a website. Some of these are for example that most B2B purchase decisions are not really made through vendors found on the internet. These types of decisions are often made on existing vendor-supplier relationships as well as the ubiquitous 'network'.

However, there are actually some very compelling reasons for a B2B company, or corporate, to spend attention on their website design. Having a website is actually not a nice-to-have or a luxury, or even just case of 'having a presence' or keeping up with the proverbial Jones's.

Let's look at some good reasons why a corporate, or B2B company, should have a website - the main of which is to gain more customers and improve the bottom line:

1.Building trust

This is a very good reason for a corporate or B2B company to have a website. Your website in this case forms part of your corporate branding, in the first place, and through the content and imagery that you publish on the site, conveys a certain message with regards to who you are and what services you offer. If you don't have a website, or if your website is badly designed, your potential customers will definitely have doubts about your standing, stature and trustworthiness. After all, which big, trustworthy company these days do NOT have a website?

2 Generating leads

We have already said that most vendor selection decisions are not based on directly finding a supplier on the Internet, however, you can be certain that the people responsible for vendor selection (especially when looking into new products) might do a quick search in the search engines to look at potential suppliers.

3. Improve your services

You can use your website to improve your services. Use the interactive mechanisms on your website to run surveys and get feedback on your quality of service or general customer satisfaction.

4. Advertise your services and products

If you are looking for cost effective advertising, look no further than a corporate website that is well designed. It can convey much more information than original print advertising such as a company brochure and even better - the information that you publish can always be fresh. If you consider the costs of print advertising, and compare this with the costs of website design there is actually no comparison - your website will win hands down every time.

5 Improve your communication

Communicate with your existing and potential clients through your website by making use of mailing lists and newsletters. You can notify clients of new product releases, special offers and general news of the company. All of these contribute to building relationships and generating more business from existing clients.

Yes, it is sometimes difficult to justify the ROI of a corporate website, since it is more difficult to directly track the relationship between website design costs and customer conversions, but really - can your company afford to be without one?

Open windows using windows shortcut keys

A cool tip to minimize and maximize all your active windows programs. You can do all using your mouse, but if you want to do this with keyboard then simply press Windows key+M to minimize all active programs and later maximize it using Windows key+Shift+M.

If you want to minimize the all active windows programs one by one then use the shortcut by pressing Alt+Space+N keys and sequentially maximize the active windows programs using shortcut Alt+Space+X keys.