Long Life May Be Your Cup of (Green) Tea

The brew helps prevent an early demise, major Japanese study suggests

By Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter

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TUESDAY, Sept. 12 (HealthDay News) -- For those hoping to live a long, healthy life, a cup of green tea may hit the spot, a large new study shows.

Adults who drank at least five cups of the brew daily had a lower risk of cardiovascular death and death from all other causes, except cancer, than those who drank less than one cup a day, according to a research team from Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan.

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They published their findings in the Sept. 13 Journal of the American Medical Association.

While many laboratory and animal studies have suggested that green tea protects against illness, its effect in humans has been less clear.

"Only four epidemiological studies [in people] have been conducted to date," said lead researcher Dr. Shinichi Kuriyama.

And those studies "included small sample sizes, and the results were inconsistent," he added.

However, "our study includes far more participants -- 40,350 -- than the previous studies," Kuriyama said. "I think our study would provide strong evidence regarding the benefits of drinking green tea in humans on cardiovascular disease."

Beginning in 1994, his team tracked the health of adults aged 40 to 79 living in northeastern Japan, where green tea is a popular beverage. The participants had no history of heart disease, stroke or cancer when they started the study.

The researchers tracked death from all causes for 11 years and also tracked deaths linked to specific causes for a 7-year period.

More than 4,000 of the participants died over the total 11 years of follow-up, the research team reported. During the 7 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, Kuriyama's team found that individuals who drank five or more cups per day had a risk of death from all causes that was 16 percent lower than people drinking less than one cup per day.

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