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Accumulating evidence of tea’s heart health benefits led researchers to conduct an umbrella review describing and critically evaluating the totality of medical evidence to date. Their findings: “It is reasonable to judge that two cups of unsweetened tea per day has the potential to decrease CVD (cardiovascular disease) risk and progression due to its flavonoid content.”
The peer-reviewed paper authored by Abby Keller and Taylor Wallace and published in the Annals of Medicine, examines 10 years of studies, from 2010-2020, that identify several biological mechanisms showing a decreased risk and severity of cardiovascular disease in tea drinkers.
Research included an observational study of 100,902 Chinese adults, published in 2020, that found that habitual tea drinkers who drank more than three cups of tea a week had a 20% lower risk of heart attack and a 22% lower risk for dying of heart disease when compared with people who drank fewer than three cups weekly. The research, published in the European Journal of Preventative Cardiology, followed adults in 15 provinces for 7 years beginning in 1998.
A similar study of 40,000 Japanese adults indicated a 26% lower risk of death from heart attack for those drinking more than five cups of green tea daily. The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, concluded that “green tea consumption is associated with reduced mortality due to all causes and due to cardiovascular disease but not with reduced mortality due to cancer.”
The authors write that, “results of population studies commonly suggest that tea consumption is inversely associated with several health outcomes. Shorter-term clinical intervention studies provide additional evidence that tea consumption has the potential to affect intermediate outcomes and biomarkers of disease in healthy, at-risk, and diseased populations.”
Based on this umbrella review, the researchers observed that the consumption of tea as a beverage “did not seem to be harmful to health; therefore, the benefits of moderate consumption likely outweigh risk.”