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Can Tea Help You Live Longer?
New research adds to the aura of an ancient remedy
Tea has been touted as medicine for centuries, and modern research has linked it to better cardiovascular health. A new study suggests tea drinkers live longer, and while the findings are encouraging, scientists caution against viewing tea as a magic health bullet.
Conventional tea is made from the leaves of an evergreen shrub called Camellia sinensis. Habitual drinkers of this tea in China have a 22% lower risk of fatal heart disease or stroke, and 15% lower risk of premature death by any cause, compared to those who seldom if ever drink tea, the new research showed. Those figures rose to 56% and 29%, respectively, for people who kept up their tea habit over time, based on surveys 8.2 years apart.
In one example of how the benefits could play out, the analysis indicates that on average, 50-year-olds who drink tea habitually — defined as at least three times a week — develop coronary heart disease or stroke 1.41 years later and live 1.26 years longer than those who seldom or never drink tea.
The study, detailed in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, involved data on 100,902 Chinese people across 7.3 years.
Smoking, drinking, physical activity, diet, and other potential confounding factors were accounted for and not likely to have biased the results, says the study’s senior author, Dr. Dongfeng Gu, an epidemiologist at Fuwai Hospital in Beijing and member of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. Still, Gu tells Elemental, the results can’t prove cause and effect, and other unaccounted-for lifestyle factors could play a role.
The protective effect of tea is thought to come from certain plant-based chemicals, including flavonoids and other polyphenols unique to tea, Gu explains. These nutrients act as antioxidants when ingested, and are thought to battle inflammation and otherwise support the immune system, battling dastardly free radicals that can damage DNA. Flavonoids are also common in many fruits and vegetables, including apples, blueberries, and broccoli, as well as in chocolate and red wine.
The body does not retain the potentially protective chemicals for long, Gu and his colleagues say. “Thus, frequent tea intake over…
