Captain Ahab’s BodyBlog

I was reading something the other day that really caught my attention. It was written by a Dr. Oz. This same Dr. Oz has appeared on Oprah and through appearances on her show found a great deal of popularity and has now been given his own TV show, which appears during the day.
Apparently Dr. Oz is a bit of a health nut and is really working hard to help people get rid of bodyfat and this article was about two beverages that you can drink that helps your body get rid of extra bodyfat.
The first was White Tea, which he said may have special fat-thwarting powers and was made form the buds and early leaves of the same plants that are used to make green and black teas. He said that your body’s fat cells increase and decrease in size according to your weight and in a lab study human fat cells treated with white tea extract accumulated significantly less fat. The tea also stimulated the fat breakdown from mature cells.
The second was something that most of us have heard about and that is Green Tea.  He stated that green tea speeds up your body’s calorie burning process and that it seemed to turn up your body’s calorie “torches” after exercise.
In fact, he said, overweight people who worked out for 12 weeks lost more belly fat when they drank green tea every day and that compounds called catechins may be the reason. They may act on enzymes that influence the way your body burns fat and calories.
The only thing that I would like to add is to be sure you are getting “real” green tea and the same probably goes for white tea. The reason I say this is that many packaged tea products on store shelves contain very little of the real tea and I found a huge difference between supermarket bought green tea and green tea leaves that I bought in an actual tea house and steeped at home.
I would like to know if any of you folks have encountered good results from these two beverages or even if you have tried white tea.
Best of luck.

I was absolutely staggered to read the results of a recent study done by the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress where they stated that high blood pressure, high cholesterol and obesity are affecting young teenagers in Canada at alarmingly high rates.
What they said was that 20% or one in five young Canadian teens studied have high blood pressure and most had at least one major risk factor for heart disease or stroke.
This was not some little rinky-dink study done on a couple dozen kids over a two week period either, the study was done on 20,719 grade nine students aged 14 and 15 over a seven year period from 2002 to 2008.
One of the most disturbing facts is that the trends are showing that things are getting worse instead of better. So with more public awareness on the problem of obesity even in young teens it has not transcended into any behavioural changes. The percentage of grade 9 students with one or ore cardio risk factors rose four points from 17 per cent to 21 per cent over the seven year period.
The percentage of students with elevated cholesterol rose seven points from 9 per cent to 16 per cent.
As the risk factors for heart disease and stroke have increased so have the hours of sedentary behaviour among teens. The percentage of 14 and 15 year olds who spent 20 hours per week watching TV or playing video games rose from 22 per cent to 24 per cent between 2002 and 2008. Also, the percentage of grade 9 students who are physically active for at least 90 minutes at least 5 times per week fell from 28 to 22 per cent.
Teens with high blood pressure or cholesterol or who are obese are likely to carry these same risk factors on into adulthood.
Without changes in these patterns of risk factors into adulthood puts these same teens in danger of becoming part of a generation that has a shorter life span than their parents because of developing early aged heart attacks and strokes.
Most of these risk factors are completely reversible if the person decides to adopt a healthier lifestyle that includes a more nutritious diet, exercising with weightlifting and doing some or various forms of cardio vascular exercise on a regular basis.
Isn’t it amazing what exercise can do to help us all live a healthier and higher quality of life?