A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal suggests that drinking tea could be associated with a lower risk of mortality regardless of the amount of sugar and milk added, the person’s preferred temperature, or genetic variations that affect the metabolic rate of caffeine.
Researchers from the UK's National Institutes of Health (NIH) used data from the UK Biobank which recorded half a million men and women between the ages of 40 to 69.
Out of this, 85 percent drink tea regularly and among this 89 percent have said that they drink black tea.
Fernando Rodriguez Artalejo, a professor of preventive medicine and public health at the University of Madrid has called the findings a “substantial advance in the field”.
He explains that most studies done in this field were done in Asia, where green tea is widely consumed.
“This article shows that regular consumption of black tea (the most widely consumed tea in Europe) is associated with a modest reduction in total and, especially, cardiovascular disease mortality over 10 years in a middle-aged, mostly white, adult general population.”Fernando Rodriguez Artalejo, Professor of Preventive Medicine & Public Health, Autonomous University of Madrid
However, Artalejo notes that the study doesn’t say definitively that tea is the cause of low mortality in tea drinkers, because it doesn’t rule out other health factors associated with the consumption of tea.
Another large-scale study conducted in November 2021 linked drinking coffee or tea to a lower risk of stroke or dementia.
Researchers at Tianjin Medical University, China found that people who drank 2-3 cups of coffee or 3-5 cups of tea, or a combination of 4-6 cups of both beverages every day, had a reduced risk of stroke or dementia.
Those who had 2-3 cups of either tea or coffee everyday had lowered their stroke risk by 32 percent.
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