Researchers studied the association of all-cause and all-cause mortality with black tea consumption in the UK, where black tea consumption is common, and found that people who drank the drink daily had a higher risk of death than those who did not. . the risk of death is reduced. Tea under supervision for more than ten years.
The study involved almost half a million men and women aged 40 to 69 who participated in the UK Biobank, a large-scale biomedical database used for international research, from 2006 to 2010. Information on death and the underlying cause of death among study participants was obtained from a database linked to the UK National Health Service. Over a 14-year follow-up period, which averaged 11 years, there were about 30,000 deaths.
Potential confounding factors include age, gender, race and ethnicity, education, body mass index, general health, comorbidities, smoking, physical activity, alcohol use, coffee and diet including fruit, the researchers say. , was assessed at baseline.
Study participants completed dietary questionnaires at inclusion and during follow-up about their tea drinking habits: how many cups of tea they drank per day and at what temperature they preferred to drink tea, from hot to hot.
Overall, 85% of participants in the UK Biobank study reported drinking tea, and of the subgroup reporting type of tea, 89% reported drinking black tea and 7% green tea. More than 9 out of 10 participants identified themselves as white. The risk was lowest – between 9% and 13% – among those who drank two or more cups of black tea a day.
The consumption of tea of a wide variety of varieties is very common in England. The country was chosen to study the potential benefits of drinking black tea with nearly 500,000 participants. The results were encouraging: people who drank two or more cups of tea a day had a 9-13% lower risk of early death from heart disease or stroke than those who did not drink tea.
The association between tea consumption and reduced risk of early death was independent of other factors, such as coffee consumption, the addition of milk or sugar to tea, the temperature of the drink and population size, lifestyle, and the influence of genes. People metabolize caffeine quickly.
This is not the first study to show that drinking tea can be beneficial to our health. Previous studies have shown an association between green tea consumption and reduced mortality, including cancer, among Asian populations, but several studies in black tea drinking populations have not found such consistent results.
The study was conducted by a US research team led by Dr. Maki Ino Choi of the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute. The researchers investigated the association between tea consumption and mortality in the UK using data from 500,000 people who participated in a UK Biobank study in the early 2000s.
Participants filled out questionnaires covering demographic, lifestyle, and health information. This included the number of cups of tea they drank each day.
The researchers followed the participants over a 14-year study period through early 2020. For those who died during this period, researchers obtained the date and cause of death from the UK National Health Service.
The researchers found that those who drank at least 2 cups of tea a day had a 9-13% lower risk of death than those who did not drink tea. Tea consumption has been associated with reduced deaths from heart disease and stroke, but not with reduced rates of cancer or respiratory disease compared to non-tea drinkers.
In their analysis, the team took into account demographic, health and lifestyle factors. Genetic data was available for most of the participants, allowing the researchers to evaluate whether the associations they produce differ from genetic variables that affect how quickly people consume caffeine. They found that these variations did not affect associations or coffee consumption.
“The results confirm that tea, including black tea, can be part of a healthy diet,” says the doctor. Erika Luftfeld of the NCI, senior author of the study.
However, the researchers explain that this is an observational study and cannot prove that drinking tea directly reduces the risk of death. They also failed to assess certain aspects of tea consumption, such as cup size and tea strength, which may be important.
The results have now been published in the September 2022 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. More research will be needed to determine how tea reduces the risk of death.
