Teatime health - updates - Brief Article

Drinking tea daily can lower your cholesterol level, reducing your risk of developing serious heart conditions.

As research continues on the effects tea has on human health, more evidence is turning up that demonstrates the benefits of drinking the brewed beverage. "The scientific community is making tremendous strides in discovering the potential for flavonoids found in black and green teas and other plant foods to promote health and reduce the risk of certain chronic diseases," says Jeffrey Blumberg, PhD, of Tufts University in Boston.

Blumberg, who heads the Antioxidants Research Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts, co-chaired a symposium on the benefits of flavonoids--plant pigments that contain antioxidant properties--on September 23, 2002, in Washington, DC.

One such study discussed at the symposium shows that regularly drinking tea lowers levels of "bad" cholesterol. Researchers at the Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland, asked test subjects to eat low-fat, low-calorie prepared meals and drink five cups of caffeinated tea or caffeinated and non-caffeinated placebos that mimicked the look of tea. Levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol dropped 10 percent among the test subjects who drank tea, says lead researcher Joseph Judd, PhD. "The controlled diet allowed us to closely examine the effects of tea drinking in conjunction with a healthy diet on cholesterol levels, free from interference by variation in other nutrients or components of the diet," he says.

The American Heart Association and the National Cholesterol Education Program were co-sponsors of the study.

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