LONDON, 7 May — Putting the kettle on has long been the answer to most problems. Now research claims to confirm the benefits of tea drinking by proving it is beneficial to health.
Drinking lots of tea may increase a patient’s chance of surviving a heart attack, according to a study of 1,900 American heart attack patients.
Tea enthusiasts who drink more than 14 cups a week were the least likely to die in the years following a heart attack, the study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association found.
Britons drink 165 million cups of tea every day, according to the British Tea Council — equivalent to three cups per person.
Tea contains flavonoids, antioxidants which occur naturally in plants, which are believed to have a wide range of heath benefits. The American researchers investigated the effect of tea on heart attack survival rates by interviewing and examining patients over nearly four years starting four days after their attack.
The study included 1,019 non-tea drinkers, 615 moderate drinkers whose average weekly tea intake in the year before their heart attack was less than 14 cups and 266 heavy tea drinkers who drank more than 14 cups per week.
Moderate drinkers averaged two cups of tea per week while heavy drinkers averaged 19.
When the patients were contacted nearly four years after their heart attacks, 313 were found to have died. Three quarters of the deceased patients had died from cardiovascular disease.
Heavy tea drinkers were most likely to have survived while the death rate among moderate tea drinkers was nearly one third lower than that of those who did not drink tea. This led researchers to conclude that there was an “inverse relationship” between tea drinking and heart attack survival rates, the study found.
Kenneth Mukamal, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard University, believes the study suggests a link between the consumption of flavonoids and better survival rates in people suffering from heart or blood vessel disease.
Mr. Mukamal said: “We found that tea drinkers generally had lower death rates regardless of age, gender, smoking status, obesity, hypertension, diabetes or previous heart attack.”
Flavonoids may also have helped some patients avoid further heart attacks by preventing degeneration of the arterial wall, Mukamal suggested.
He cited an earlier study in which black tea drinking improved the blood vessels’ ability to relax.
Flavonoids can also have anti-clotting effects but more research is needed to establish whether this happens in the body, he added.
Apples, onions, broccoli and red wine are also rich in flavanoids. The researchers also found that caffeine intake had no effect upon patients’ survival.
Further research, including detailed accounts of patients’ diets, is needed to discover whether there is a definite link between tea and survival after a heart attack, Mukamal said.
This is the latest in a series of studies to conclude that tea drinking can be good for health.
Earlier this year a study in China showed that regular tea-drinkers were only half as likely to develop cancer of the stomach or oesophagus as non-drinkers.
Research also revealed that the caffeine in tea or coffee could relieve aches and pains at least as quickly as painkilling medication. (The Independent)
