Green Tea May Add Years to Your Lifetime
Everyone wants to lead a long and healthy life. Now it appears that green tea can help you achieve your goals. A study completed by a research team from Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that green tea “reduced mortality due to all causes.”
At the beginning of the study, researchers noted “Green tea polyphenols have been extensively studied as cardiovascular disease and cancer chemopreventive agents in vitro and in animal studies. However, the effects of green tea consumption in humans remains unclear.” So they decided to “investigate the associations between green tea consumption and all-cause and cause-specific mortality.”
Researchers began the Ohsaki National Health Insurance Cohort Study in 1994 among 40,530 Japanese adults aged 40 to 79 years without a history of stroke, coronary heart disease, or cancer. Participants were followed for up to 11 years for all-cause mortality and for up to seven years for cause-specific mortality. Study participants lived in northeastern Japan, where green tea is a popular beverage.
More than 4,000 of the participants died over the total 11 years of follow-up. During the seven years of the study that focused on specific causes, 892 people died from cardiovascular disease and 1,134 from cancer.
Comparing death rates and green tea consumption, the research team found that individuals who drank five or more cups per day had a risk of death from all causes that was 16% lower than people drinking less than one cup per day. Deaths from cardiovascular disease were 26% lower for tea drinkers, compared to those who avoided the beverage. Green tea appeared to have no effect on cancer risk, however in this particular study.
Women fared even better in the study. Women who drank five or more cups of green tea per day had a 31% lower risk of death from heart disease and stroke death compared to women who drank less than a cup a day.
Journal of the American Medical Association 296(10):1255-1265, 2006
Everyone wants to lead a long and healthy life. Now it appears that green tea can help you achieve your goals. A study completed by a research team from Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that green tea “reduced mortality due to all causes.”
At the beginning of the study, researchers noted “Green tea polyphenols have been extensively studied as cardiovascular disease and cancer chemopreventive agents in vitro and in animal studies. However, the effects of green tea consumption in humans remains unclear.” So they decided to “investigate the associations between green tea consumption and all-cause and cause-specific mortality.”
Researchers began the Ohsaki National Health Insurance Cohort Study in 1994 among 40,530 Japanese adults aged 40 to 79 years without a history of stroke, coronary heart disease, or cancer. Participants were followed for up to 11 years for all-cause mortality and for up to seven years for cause-specific mortality. Study participants lived in northeastern Japan, where green tea is a popular beverage.
More than 4,000 of the participants died over the total 11 years of follow-up. During the seven years of the study that focused on specific causes, 892 people died from cardiovascular disease and 1,134 from cancer.
Comparing death rates and green tea consumption, the research team found that individuals who drank five or more cups per day had a risk of death from all causes that was 16% lower than people drinking less than one cup per day. Deaths from cardiovascular disease were 26% lower for tea drinkers, compared to those who avoided the beverage. Green tea appeared to have no effect on cancer risk, however in this particular study.
Women fared even better in the study. Women who drank five or more cups of green tea per day had a 31% lower risk of death from heart disease and stroke death compared to women who drank less than a cup a day.
Journal of the American Medical Association 296(10):1255-1265, 2006
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