Tea and coffee lovers rejoice!
There's now an extra reason why I'm so fond of the old saying, 'while there is tea, there is hope.'
The line comes from an old English playwright. The present boost from research revealing both tea and coffee can ward off strokes and dementia.
But given the media regularly bombards us with contradictory health advice such as red wine is good and then bad for your heart, can we really believe it?
As a heavy drinker of both tea and coffee, my selection bias is naturally delighted with the study, which says imbibing a combination of four to six cuppas a day reduces the risk of disease.
The insights come from the UK Biobank dataset (see here), which analysed 366,000 people over 16 years, of which 10 had at least one stroke and 5000 developed dementia.
They were all aged between 50 and 74 and self-reported their levels of consumption.
And guess what? The boffins deduced that the interaction of the antioxidants, caffeine and other goodies in both beverages made the difference. Drinking tea or coffee helped, but both really helped.
But I'm confused. Have we not been warned against drinking too much of the steaming stuff? Only in the past few years has the World Health Organisation taken coffee off its list of suspected carcinogens.
“After years of studies that seemed to swing between dire warnings and cheery promises about what our favourite caffeinated beverages do and don’t do, much of the recent science regarding coffee and tea is generally positive,” says WebMD, a reliable US website.
Others suggest that drinking either can also aid digestion and even increase longevity (see more here). It all seems to come down to how much you drink and when you drink it.
My own favourite is Indian spiced tea, known as chai. Forget the powdered, and over-sweetened versions foisted by some cafes in Australia, make your own or better still, go to India. Apart from the black tea, there are also spices which must be good for you!
What is your verdict about the health benefits of tea and coffee? Are you happy with the amount you drink, and do you think it does you 'good'? Maybe you still like to believe a glass of wine a day delivers similar benefits in a more excellent way?
