Heart Healthy

Here’s something for both tea and coffee drinkers (and those that like it all) – results from a recent study in the Netherlands suggest that people who drink tea and/or coffee are less likely to die from heart disease than those that do not consume either beverage. While not the first of its kind, this was certainly one of the largest and longest studies on the potential effects of tea and coffee in the world involving 37,000 subjects for 13 years. Researchers considered various lifestyle factors such as smoking and exercise and reported the following key findings:

• Subjects who drank 3 to 6 cups (let’s assume 8 ounces) of tea each day had a 45% lower risk of death from heart disease compared with those that drank less than 1 cup a day.
• Drinking more than 6 cups of tea a day resulted in a 36% lower risk of death from heart disease compared with those that drank less than 1 cup.
• Subjects who drank more than 2 and less than 4 cups of coffee each day had a 20% lower risk of death from heart disease than those that drank more or less coffee.
• Neither coffee nor tea consumption seemed to affect the risk of stroke.

So, according to this study, tea drinkers win the race but coffee drinkers are still benefiting from their morning brew. In addition – in case you’re curious – most of the tea-drinking subjects drank black tea.

Source: http://atvb.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/30/8/1665.