By Wendy Haaf
Drinking black tea may modestly reduce your risk for dying prematurely, even if your genes make you sensitive to the effects of caffeine.
In a 2022 study, US researchers studied health questionnaires that had been filled out by 498,043 UK adults aged 40 to 69 between 2006 and 2010 as part of a large-scale research project.
Most respondents—85 per cent—reported drinking tea regularly, and 89 per cent of those consumed black tea. Over an average follow-up period of just over 11 years, the incidence of deaths from all causes was as much as 13 per cent lower among participants who drank two or more cups of tea each day than among those who weren’t tea drinkers.
Varying rates at which participants’ bodies metabolized caffeine made no difference to the results; nor did it matter if participants added milk or sugar to their tea or also drank coffee.
Source: Annals of Internal Medicine
Photo: iStock
