There’s nothing quite like a steaming cuppa to kick-start a brisk autumn morning – and now, science has confirmed that your daily brew is brimming with health benefits. Fresh research suggests that the nation’s favourite beverage could actually be a heart protector, reducing blood pressure, improving cholesterol levels, and even slashing the risk of heart attacks, strokes, and type 2 diabetes.
Tea scientist Dr Tim Bond from the Tea Advisory Panel said: “Tea’s heart benefits have been known for many years and new scientific research has confirmed just how heart-healthy tea really is. Research published in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition highlights the reasons for tea’s heart benefits, highlighting its rich polyphenol content and emphasising the clear benefits of daily tea drinking to keep our hearts in tip-top condition.”
Delving further, Dr Bond added: “Specific polyphenol compounds – called flavan-3-ols – could explain why tea has a beneficial effect on blood pressure, heart health, risk of stroke and type 2 diabetes. In fact these flavonoid compounds could reduce the risk of developing chronic disease by as much as a fifth (19%) and reduce the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease by 13%.
“Most of the flavonoids in the British diet come from black tea with tea drinkers getting 698mg a day compared with non-tea drinkers getting 33mg a day.
“In fact such are the suggested benefits of these compounds that the American Society for Nutrition has proposed the first ever dietary bioactive guideline, which recommends intakes of 400–600 mg/d of flavan3-ols to improve cardiometabolic health. This equates to around four cups of tea a day.”
The perks of sipping tea
Dr Bond, referring to the new Frontiers study, said: “This confirms tea’s benefits in blood pressure, with benefits in blood pressure lowering seen with tea intakes between one and four cups daily. Long-term tea consumption is confirmed as having a benefit on blood vessel function, which likely helps to explain its impact on blood pressure.
“Black tea was shown to have particular benefit for lowering blood pressure when other heart risk factors such as homocysteine were high. The authors in the Frontiers study said that the flavonoid content of black tea also appears to be responsible for the cholesterol-lowering impact of tea, with the high flavonoid content in black tea linked with these cholesterol-lowering effects.
“The study also found that tea improves blood glucose levels and the way in which the body manages insulin – vital in diabetes and pre-diabetes. Plus, given that diabetes increases the risk of heart disease, the fact that tea may help with blood glucose adds more knowledge as to how tea may reduce the risk of heart disease.
“In fact this paper notes than an extra single of cup of tea each day reduces the risk of dying from cardiovascular heart disease – any disease affecting the heart and blood vessels – by 4%.”
The fresh findings emerge as a nationwide poll of 1,000 Brits, examined by the Tea Advisory Panel (TAP), exposed that almost three quarters consider their cardiac wellbeing, yet merely a third associate tea with heart advantages.
Dr Bond said: “We are ‘missing a trick’ when it comes to this simple, daily way to protect our hearts. We should aim for 3-4 cups of tea a day, which will give us 400-600 mg daily of the polyphenol flavan-3-ols – which dampen inflammation and stress in our bodies, including our hearts and blood vessels.”
