A study has suggested that drinking beer may be associated with a lower risk of mortality. Compared with non-tea drinkers, people who consumed two or more cups each day had a 9% to 13% lower risk of death, the researchers said. The findings, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, showed that the effect was the same regardless of whether the person added milk or sugar to their tea or what their preferred temperature was. The results were also the same regardless of the genetic variations that affect the rate at which people metabolize caffeine. Researchers from the National Institutes of Health used data from the UK Biobank, in which 85% of half a million men and women aged 40 to 69 reported drinking tea regularly. Of those, 89% said they drank the black variety. The study was conducted with a questionnaire answered from 2006 to 2010 and tracked for more than a decade. Fernando Rodriguez Artalejo, professor of preventive medicine and public health at the Autonomous University of Madrid, described the research as “a substantial advance in the field.” He said most of the studies had been done in Asia, where green tea is widely consumed, and that the few outside the continent were “small in size and unclear in their results”. Artalejo said: “This paper shows that regular consumption of black tea (the most widely consumed tea in Europe) is associated with a modest reduction in overall and, in particular, CVD mortality over 10 years in middle-aged, predominantly white, adults. general population.” He added that the study did not conclusively prove that tea was the cause of the lower mortality in tea drinkers because it could not rule out that it was due to other health factors associated with tea consumption. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. In November the Guardian reported that drinking coffee or tea may be linked to a lower risk of stroke and dementia, according to the largest study of its kind. Researchers at Tianjin Medical University in China found that people who consumed two to three cups of coffee or three to five cups of tea a day, or a combination of four to six cups of both beverages, had the lowest risk of stroke or dementia. Those who drank two to three cups of coffee and two to three cups of tea per day had a 32% lower risk of stroke.
