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Tea and a Heart-Healthy Lifestyle
Drink up for benefits galore!
A cup of tea can help you greet the morning. A tall iced tea is just right for relaxing with friends. But did you know that drinking tea as part of a healthy lifestyle may help maintain heart health?
It doesn’t matter whether you sip it hot from a cup or in a tall glass over ice: Either way you take your tea, studies suggest that it plays a role in health and wellness, says Patricia Groziak, M.S., R.D., senior lead nutrition manager for Unilever.
A number of population studies have shown that regular tea drinking, as part of a healthy lifestyle, may also help maintain a healthy heart, says Groziak. Two separate analyses of these studies have shown that drinking three cups of tea daily helped reduce the risk for cardiovascular-disease-related death or heart attack by 10% to 12%.
Several recent clinical studies have shown that one way black tea may maintain heart health is by promoting healthy function of the inner lining of blood vessels.
Recently, researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, analyzed data from nine studies of strokes among nearly 195,000 individuals. According to lead author Lenore Arab, Ph.D., a professor of medicine at UCLA, “In the studies analyzed, drinking three cups of tea a day lowered the risk of ischemic stroke by 21%.”
Although these researchers aren’t certain which compounds in tea are responsible for this effect, they speculate that either the flavonoid antioxidant (and it’s a mouthful!) epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) or the amino acid theanine may play a role. The findings are relevant to drinking three cups of green or black tea — both of which come from the plant ‘Camellia sinensis.’ Herbal tea, which is made from a blend of herbs, flowers, fruits and/or spices, does not have the same effect.
In addition to its role in health and wellness, tea drinking is budget friendly as well. The cost of one cup of regular black tea is about four cents, says Groziak. “Unsweetened, fresh-brewed tea — either black or green — has no sodium, no sugar, no fat and no calories, and it is an excellent source of hydration,” she adds.
Tea can be part of a healthy diet, but it is not intended to treat or prevent stroke or cardiovascular disease. If you have questions about your health, talk with your doctor.
For more information, visit www.lipton.com
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This was really interesting! I love tea so I was wondering what this was all about!