Tea Reduces Non-CV Mortality

Tea reduces non-cardiovascular related deaths by 24 percent, a new study states.

Several studies have tried to find how drinking coffee and tea affects health. Coffee consumption is positively related to increased risk of acute myocardial infarction, but a significantly lower incidence of Parkinson's disease (PD). Tea is known to contain several antioxidants that can lower health complication risks.

The researchers found that tea-drinkers were more likely to follow healthier lifestyles.

"If you have to choose between tea or coffee it's probably better to drink tea. Coffee and tea are important components of our way of life. Their effects on cardiovascular (CV) health have been investigated in the past with sometimes divergent results. We investigated the effects of coffee and tea on CV mortality and non-CV mortality in a large French population at low risk of cardiovascular diseases," Professor Nicolas Danchin from France said in a news release.

Data for the study came from 131 401 people, aged between 18-95 years, who had a health check-up at Paris IPC Preventive Medicine Center. The participants were followed for about 3.5 years, during which, there were 95 deaths from CV and 632 deaths from non-CV causes. The researchers assessed coffee/tea consumption of the participants via questionnaires.

People who drank coffee were at a high risk of suffering from cardiovascular diseases, the researchers found. Non-coffee drinkers were more likely to be in better health and had higher physical activity levels.

"Tea has antioxidants which may provide survival benefits. Tea drinkers also have healthier lifestyles so does tea drinking reflect a particular person profile or is it tea, per se, that improves outcomes - for me that remains an open question. Pending the answer to that question, I think that you could fairly honestly recommend tea drinking rather than coffee drinking and even rather than not drinking anything at all," Danchin said in a news release.

The study was presented at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress in Barcelona.