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New study claims drinking at least two cups of tea a day helps you live longer

It doesn't matter how you like to brew your cup, either.

Emily Sergeant - 30th August 2022

A new study has suggested that one of the keys to living a longer life is to drink at least two cups of tea per day.

In what is news that’s bound make the day of tea drinkers nationwide, according to some newly-conduced research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, people who drink two or more cups of tea daily are likely to live longer than those who do not drink any – and apparently, it doesn’t matter how you like to brew your cup either.

Despite the temperature it’s drunk at, and regardless of whether you take it black, or with milk and sugar, the study found that the positive affects of tea appear unaffected.

Genetic variants that influence the rate people metabolise caffeine were also found to not affect tea’s beneficial properties.

So, how was the research conducted then? And can we take it as the truth?

Well, the study was carried out by researchers from the National Institutes of Health using data from the UK Biobank, alongside a questionnaire that was answered by participants between 2006 to 2010, and followed up on more than a decade.

Read more: Research has finally proven that Mancunians make the best cups of tea in the UK

Researchers found that 85% of the 500,000 or so men and women aged 40 to 69 report that they regularly drink tea, and of those, 89% said they drank black tea.

In a middle-aged and mostly white adult general population, the research suggested that regular consumption of black tea was associated with between a 9% and 13% reduction in mortality over 10 years.

This was especially true in terms of cardiovascular disease.

The findings from the study have been described as representing “a substantial advance in the field”, according to Fernando Rodríguez Artalejo, who is a professor of preventive medicine and public health at the Autonomous University of Madrid.

Read more: A professor has claimed that putting milk before water makes tea taste better

Professor Artalejo did however make sure to state that the study does not definitively establish that tea is the cause of the lower early mortality, as it can’t exclude that this is down to other health factors associated with tea consumption, and the question of whether people who don’t drink tea should start doing so to improve their health also remains unanswered at this point.

“Studies should be done with repeated measurements of tea consumption over time,” he explained.

“[They should] compare the mortality of those who do not consume tea on a sustained basis with that of those who have started to consume tea or have increased their consumption over time, and those who have been drinking tea for years.”

Featured Image – Flickr