rinking green tea three times a week could make you live longer and cut your risk of having a heart attack or stroke, a study has found. Antioxidants in the drink could help to protect the heart and keep people healthier for longer.
Researchers studied more than 100,000 people in China and found regular drinkers lived, on average, 1.26 years longer than people who didn’t drink tea.They also tended to develop serious conditions such as heart disease 1.4 years later than the non-drinkers.No significant benefits were observed for black tea drinkers, with scientists saying green tea was the only kind that had an effect. Experts say the study is not strong enough for people to switch to green tea in the hope of better health, and drinking tea would not undo other unhealthy habits. A study by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing monitored the health of 100,902 people who had never had a cancer, heart attack or stroke.
They tracked their health for around seven years and recorded how often they drank tea.
Regular drinkers were those who consumed tea three or more times or week – any less and people were considered non-drinkers.
The study did not look specifically at green tea, but only eight per cent of people in the experiment drank black tea and that had no significant health benefits, it said.
Green tea, meanwhile, cut the risk of having heart disease or a stroke, and of dying of either of those conditions, by around 25 per cent.
In the study overall, tea drinkers had a 39 per cent lower risk of either condition over eight years, a 56 per cent lower risk of dying from one of them, and a 29 per cent lower chance of dying during the study. ‘Habitual tea consumption is associated with lower risks of cardiovascular disease and all-cause death,’ said Dr Xinyan Wang, the author of the study.
‘The favourable health effects are the most robust for green tea and for long-term habitual tea drinkers.’
Dr Wang and colleagues said one reason tea could improve people’s health was that it contains polyphenols, a category of around 500 chemicals which contain antioxidants.Polyphenols are found naturally in fruits and vegetables and are thought to be able to stop or repair cell damage, control sugar levels in the body and slow weight gain. The Chinese researchers said past evidence has suggested polyphenols can protect against heart disease, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Green tea may be particularly beneficial because it is not fermented like black tea, a process which might make the antioxidants less effective.
Jodie Relf, a dietitian and spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association, said: ‘The researchers do not mention how the tea is consumed or in what form – in China green tea is often consumed as a loose tea and not in tea bag form as it is in more westernised cultures; this may change the health enhancing properties of the tea.
