A large study of adults in China found regular tea drinkers had a lower estimated risk across several vascular diseases, while those describing their tea as “burning hot” had a higher risk.
Published online Wednesday, Oct. 21, in the Journal of Internal Medicine, the prospective study followed 485,934 adults for a median of 9.05 years. Researchers recorded 14,863 cases involving cardiovascular and cerebrovascular conditions, pulmonary heart disease and peripheral artery disease.
People who drank tea at least three times weekly had an estimated 11.2% lower relative risk than those drinking it less often. The result reflects the combined disease measure and does not isolate strokes. In a separate disease-specific finding, habitual tea consumption was associated with 36.6% lower ischemic stroke risk, the largest reduction reported for an individual condition.
The temperature analysis produced a different association: respondents who called their tea “burning hot” had 16% higher vascular-disease risk than people who were not regular tea drinkers. Participants described the temperature themselves; the reported analysis gives no measured cutoff for its “burning hot” category. Because the comparison group was nonregular tea drinkers, the finding does not establish whether temperature changed the association among habitual consumers.
The study tracked existing tea habits and later health outcomes rather than assigning participants to drink tea at set frequencies or temperatures. It therefore cannot show that tea drinking or serving temperature caused the risk differences; other factors may have contributed. No absolute-risk estimates for individual participants accompanied those relative figures.
The study also reported more consistent inverse associations for black tea than green tea, while moderate-strength tea had the lowest estimated risk. These comparisons describe patterns in the data and carry the same observational limitation.
Euronews quoted British Heart Foundation senior dietitian Dell Stanford, who said dietary and lifestyle differences among participants could also account for the association.
