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Heavy tea drinkers, take heart! According to a recent report in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, drinking lots of tea may reduce a person's risk of dying after a heart attack.
In the Determinants of Myocardial Infarction Onset Study, Boston scientists found that participants who drank the most tea were the least likely to die during the three or four years after a heart attack. Researchers suspect that the benefit may come from tea's flavonoids --antioxidants found naturally in various foods derived from plants--which are thought to prevent cardiovascular disease.
"The effects of tea on health have been widely studied, in part because tea contains flavonoids and other anti-oxidant components, but we don't know of any previous studies that considered the effect of tea consumption on survival after a heart attack," says Kenneth Mukamal, M.D., assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston and lead author of the study. "Flavonoids are probably the best guess for the apparent benefits of tea in this study."
Findings support those from previous studies that linked flavonoid consumption to a lower risk of coronary heart disease and a lower risk of death in people who have heart or blood vessel disease.
Moderate tea use was associated with a 28 percent lower death rate compared with the death rate of non drinkers. People who averaged 19 cups per week had a 44 percent lower death rate during the follow-up period. In the 1,900 people interviewed for the study, researchers took into account green or black tea drunk hot or cold, but not herbal tea.
"We found that tea drinkers generally had lower death rates regardless of age, gender, smoking status, obesity, hypertension, diabetes, or previous heart attack," Dr. Mukamal says.
A recent randomized trial found that black-tea consumption improved endothelial function (the blood vessels' ability to relax) in people with coronary heart disease, he says. "Flavonoids also inhibit the oxidation of low-density lipoprotein (LDL). Oxidized LDL may promote atherosclerosis, so this property of tea may help prevent additional heart attacks, at least in some patients," says Dr. Mukamal.
The findings should apply to different types of tea, Dr. Mukamal adds. Black tea accounts for most tea consumption in North America, as well as the largest portion of flavonoid intake, he says.
"There are no downsides. There is very good evidence that asking people to drink tea improves their blood vessels' ability to function normally, including the ability to relax," concludes Dr. Mukamal.
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