Drinking at least two cups of tea a day protects your heart and helps you live longer, study finds | Science & Technology News

A new study shows that tea drinkers who consume more than two cups per day are likely to live longer than those who don’t.

Findings published in the Annals of Internal Medicine concluded that the positive effects did not appear to be affected by drinking black tea, with milk, with sugar, drinking temperature or by genetic variations. affect the rate of human caffeine metabolism.

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health, using data from the UK’s Biobank, found that 85% of half a million men and women, aged 40 to 69, reported that they regularly drink tea.

Among them, 89% said they drink black tea.

The study was conducted with a questionnaire that was answered from 2006 to 2010 and followed for more than a decade.

The results showed that compared with non-tea drinkers, regular consumption of black tea (the most widely consumed tea in Europe) was associated with a slight 9% to 13% reduction in mortality in 10 years in middle age. , mostly white, adult population, especially in terms of cardiovascular disease.

Fernando Rodríguez Artalejo, professor of preventive medicine and public health at the Autonomous University of Madrid, describes the study as representing “a significant step forward in this field”, saying that most of the research. was done in Asia, where green tea is most widely consumed, and a few outside Asia with “small scale and unsatisfactory results”.

He said the study did not definitively establish that tea was responsible for the reduction in early death among tea drinkers, because it could not be ruled out that this was due to other health factors associated with drinking. tea.

Another question that remains unanswered is whether non-tea drinkers should start doing so to improve their health.

“Studies should be done with repeated measurements of tea consumption over time and compare mortality rates of non-tea consumers on a steady basis with mortality rates for non-tea consumers,” he said. people who have started to consume tea or have increased their intake over time, and who have been drinking tea for many years.”