Green Tea Extract Can Lower Blood Sugar & Improve Gut Health, Reveals New Study

How do you care for your body? Eat a nutrient-dense diet? Exercise daily? Phenomenal. These are critical umbrella strategies for supporting your overall well-being, but it can be helpful to get a little more granular when caring for specific areas of your body. In particular, managing your gut health and blood sugar balance. 

You've likely heard of the gut-brain axis, but what about the gut-liver axis? It's where our gut and cardiometabolic health have a meetup (no seriously, these systems are intricately intertwined it turns out). If you're a green tea person, listen up: A new study published in Current Developments in Nutrition1 just revealed that consuming 1 gram of green tea extract each day actually lowered fasting glucose levels and improved the inflammatory status of the gut.

In a robust clinical trial (i.e., randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study) research collaboration between Penn State and Ohio State led by professor and researcher Richard Bruno, Ph.D. R.D., participants followed a low-polyphenol diet while consuming 1 gram of green tea extract in supplement form each day for 28 days. This particular green tea extract featured 890 milligrams of catechins, the famous polyphenolic phytonutrients in green tea leaves (EGCG probably being the most well known).

By cutting down on polyphenol consumption (i.e., phytochemical compounds found in fruits, veggies, and many other plants) in their baseline diet, researchers were able to cut down on some of the surrounding nutritional "noise" to focus on the gut-liver axis impact of those fascinating green tea catechins.