Drinking tea may be linked to lower risk of death, study suggests

A study has suggested that having a brew could be associated with a lower risk of mortality. When compared with those who do not have tea, people who consumed two or more cups each day had between a 9% and 13% lower risk of mortality, researchers said.

The findings, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, suggested the result was the same regardless of whether the person added milk or sugar to their tea, or what their preferred temperature was.

The results were also the same regardless of genetic variants affecting the rate at which people metabolise caffeine.

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health used data from the UK Biobank, in which 85% of the half a million men and women, aged 40 to 69, reported that they regularly drank tea. Of those, 89% said they drank the black variety.

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

He added the study did not definitively establish that tea was the cause of the lower mortality of tea drinkers, because it could not exclude that this was down to other health factors associated with tea consumption.

In November the Guardian reported that drinking coffee or tea may be linked with a lower risk of stroke and dementia, according to the largest study of its kind.

Researchers at Tianjin Medical University in China found that people who consumed two to three cups of coffee or three to five cups of tea a day, or a combination of four to six cups of both drinks, had the lowest risk of stroke or dementia.

Those who drank two to three cups of coffee and two to three cups of tea daily had a 32% lower risk of stroke.