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A Guide To The Best Green Tea Supplements

In my previous article about green tea, I covered many of the various benefits that you can get from consuming it regularly.

Now, as promised, I am going to go over the specific green tea supplements that I personally recommend.

I’ll also cover how much you should be taking, and when you should be taking it.

After reading this article, my hope is that you’ll have a better understanding of green tea supplements as a whole – and that you’ll start taking these powerful health-boosters daily.

How Should You Take Your Green Tea?

Before going into the specific brands that I recommend, I want to briefly take a look at the primary ways that you could choose to take green tea.

Basically, you can either drink it as an actual tea, or take it as a capsule (much like you would a vitamin).

My recommendation here is pretty straightforward: if you want to consistently get the benefits from green tea, then I would recommend taking a quality supplement each day, instead of relying on drinking it in tea form.

You simply won’t get the benefits from green tea unless you take it regularly. Most people find it easier to remember to take a pill each day compared to drinking green tea with any level of consistency.

In addition, you need to be taking enough green tea each day, otherwise it won’t do much good (this will be addressed later). It is far easier to get the quantity of catechins that you need from capsules, instead of having to drink multiple cups of tea each day.

In fact, most green tea supplement capsules contain 2-3 times as many catechins as a cup of green tea.

Don’t get me wrong, you’ll still be able to get catechins from drinking green tea – assuming that you drink enough of it – so that is an option if you prefer.

However, in terms of both ease and consistency, capsules win hands down.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I’m going to go over a couple brands that I would personally recommend.

You can’t go wrong with either of these, so read through the reviews to determine which one makes sense for you.

Life Extension Mega Green Tea Extract

life extension mega green tea extract

As I mentioned in my article about fish oil supplements, Life Extension is one of my favorite supplement brands. Everything that they put out is high-quality and reasonably priced.

Thankfully, their green tea supplement doesn’t disappoint; on the contrary, it is truly a top-notch product!

There are several reasons why this is my recommended green tea supplement.

Firstly, they sell the most concentrated green tea capsules that I have personally seen.

As I mentioned in my article about the benefits of green tea, you are primarily concerned with the catechins that it offers.

Whenever you take a look at a green tea supplement, you’ll need to first do a bit of quick math to see how many catechins it actually contains.

A lot of brands will use lower amounts to save money, so you want to do your homework!

Life Extension green tea is absolutely loaded with catechins. In fact, each capsule contains 326 mg of them, which is an extremely high concentration.

This means that you won’t need to take as many capsules, per day, to hit the appropriate dosage.

The other main reason for my recommendation is that Life Extension actually sells 2 different versions of their green tea: one with caffeine and one without.

Many people don’t realize this, but tea actually contains a fair amount of caffeine (although less than coffee).

If you only drink it occasionally, you are unlikely to notice anything – but in supplement form, the caffeine you take in can really add up.

This is actually one of the biggest issues that some people have with green tea supplements. They don’t want to load up on caffeine and feel jittery all day.

On the other hand, some people prefer having some caffeine for the energy boost and weight loss benefits.

With Life Extension, you are covered either way (in fact, I can’t think of another decaffeinated option on the market).

You can order a container of 100 softgels of the decaffeinated version of Life Extension Mega Green Tea Extract from Amazon here.

Or, if you prefer, you can go with the caffeinated version instead, which you can get from Amazon here.

Now Foods Green Tea Extract

now foods green tea extract

Now Foods is another great supplement brand. They are very reputable, sell a wide-variety of nutritional supplements, and don’t take any shortcuts in the quality department.

They are also very fairly priced.

Their green tea supplement is one of the more popular ones on the market, so it shouldn’t be very difficult to find in stores (unlike Life Extension, which has more limited retail availability).

In terms of specific concentrations, each softgel has considerably fewer catechins than Life Extension’s product – only 160mg per softgel.

This means that in order to achieve the recommended dose, you’ll need to take more of these per day (we’ll get into specifics in a second).

That being said, they are a cheaper alternative to Life Extension overall.

Each 250 softgel bottle of Now Foods Green Tea Extract will only cost you $13 from Amazon here, which comes out to roughly 5 cents per softgel.

Even when you consider that Life Extension’s softgels contain more than double the amount of catechins, it still works out to be quite a bit cheaper.

Finally, I should point out that Now Foods does not offer a decaffeinated version of their green tea supplement.

So, if you have caffeine sensitivities, this may be a determining factor for you.

How Much Should You Take?

You need to be taking your green tea supplement daily, if you want to see any real benefits.

In terms of the specific amount, that is still somewhat up for debate – but it is generally recommended that you take anywhere from 400 – 600 mg of catechins each day.

Moreover, the clinical studies that have successfully demonstrated green tea’s effectiveness have been conducted using those amounts, so I would recommend staying within that range.

If you are taking one of the brands that I recommended above, this works out to either 2 Life Extension softgels per day (for 652 mg of catechins) or 4 Now Foods softgels per day (for 640 mg of catechins).

When To Take Your Green Tea

This part is really up to you, and how well you tolerate taking green tea on an empty stomach!

You see, it has been shown that your body will absorb a greater quantity of catechins when you’re fasted – so taking it when you wake up, before you eat anything, may be the most effective time in terms of absorption.

However, many people (myself included) can feel nauseous if they take green tea supplements on an empty stomach. If you experience this, I would recommended taking your capsules in 2 doses with your meals.

So, for Life Extension, you would take 1 softgel with lunch and 1 with dinner.

For Now Foods, you would take 2 softgels with lunch and another 2 with dinner.

While this may not maximize absorption, it is considerably less likely to upset your stomach, making it my recommendation for most people.

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