The findings, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, concluded that the positive effects appear to be unaffected by whether the tea is taken black, with milk, with sugar, the temperature at which it is drunk or by genetic variations that affect the rate at which the humans metabolize caffeine. Researchers from the National Institutes of Health used data from the UK Biobank, which looked at 85% of half a million men and women aged 40 to 69 who reported drinking tea regularly. Of those, 89% said they drank black tea. The study was conducted with a questionnaire answered from 2006 to 2010 and tracked for more than a decade. It found that compared to non-tea drinkers, regular consumption of black tea (the most widely consumed tea in Europe) was associated with a modest reduction of between 9% and 13% in mortality over 10 years in middle-aged adults. , predominantly white, adult general population, particularly with respect to cardiovascular disease. Fernando Rodríguez Artalejo, a professor of preventive medicine and public health at the Autonomous University of Madrid, described the research as a “significant advance in the field,” saying most studies had been done in Asia, where green tea is the most widely consumed. and the few outside Asia were “small in size and indeterminate in their effects.” He said the study does not definitively prove that tea is the cause of lower premature mortality in tea drinkers because it cannot rule out that it is due to other health factors associated with tea consumption. Another question that remains unanswered is whether people who don’t drink tea should start drinking it to improve their health. He said: “Studies need to be done with repeated measurements of tea consumption over time and compare the mortality of those who do not drink tea on a continuous basis with that of those who started drinking tea or increased their consumption over time, and those who have been drinking tea for years.”
