Tea benefits for women

Three cups of tea a day helps stop heart attacks and strokes (unless you're a man)

By JENNY HOPE

Last updated at 12:00 17 March 2008

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Good for your heart: Tea (but only for women)

Women who drink three cups of tea a day may be protecting themselves against heart attacks and strokes.

They are less likely to have plaques - dangerous build-ups of fat and cholesterol - in their arteries, researchers found.

Only around one third of women who drank three or more cups of tea a day had plaques in a neck artery, compared with almost half of those who drank no tea.

However, the French study appeared to show that men who were regular tea-drinkers did not reap the same health benefits.

Researchers examined 2,613 men and 3,984 women with an average age of 73, measuring the level of plaque in their carotid artery using ultrasound.

Carotid plaque was found in 45 per cent of women who were not tea-drinkers, in 42.5 per cent of women who drank one or two cups of tea daily and in only 33.7 per cent of those reporting drinking three or more cups a day.

Even women with high blood pressure appeared to gain protection from tea, found the study by Institut National de la Santé Et de la Recherche Médicale, based in Paris and Lille.

The report said it was unclear why men did not benefit from tea-drinking in terms of lessening plaque build-up.

One theory is that tea might in some way complement oestrogen, the female hormone which is believed to help protect women against heart problems.

Dr Catherine Hood, from the industry-backed Tea Advisory Panel, said: "Findings in dietary studies are often confounded by other factors such as presence of disease in those taking part and other lifestyle behaviours.

"However, in this study, findings did not depend on whether the women were smoking or not, whether or not they took hormone replacement therapy and whether or not they suffered from vascular disease.

"No significant interaction was found with level of education, or fruit and vegetable intake."

Victoria Taylor, heart health dietician for the British Heart Foundation, said the findings, published in the medical journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, And Vascular Biology, are "good news for people who enjoy a regular cuppa" and called for further tests on the subject.

Almost 80 per cent of Britons are tea-drinkers, getting through an estimated 165million cups every day.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-536208/Three-cups-tea-day-helps-stop-heart-attacks-strokes-unless-youre-man.html#ixzz1QB6ltu9h

Black tea and Parkinson's

Black tea may slash Parkinson's disease risk

By Stephen Daniells, 22-Feb-2008

Related topics: Research, Phytochemicals, plant extracts, Cognitive and mental function

Drinking at least 23 cups of black tea a month, or about three-quarters of a cup a day, may slash the risk of developing Parkinson's disease by a whopping 71 per cent, suggests new research from Singapore.

The benefits of the beverage were not linked to the caffeine content, suggest the results of the study of 63,257 Chinese men and women published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.



Parkinson's disease is a degenerative condition affecting movement and balance in more than one million Americans each year, a figure expected to rise due to ageing populations.



Green tea contains between 30 and 40 per cent of water-extractable polyphenols, while black tea (green tea that has been oxidized by fermentation) contains between 3 and 10 per cent. Oolong tea is semi-fermented tea and is somewhere between green and black tea.



The four primary polyphenols found in fresh tealeaves are epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), epigallocatechin (EGC), epicatechin gallate (ECG), and epicatechin (EC).



Despite results from previous studies reporting that green tea may reduce the risk of Parkinson's, the new study, reported no benefits among participants of the Singapore Chinese Health Study.



Lead author Louis Tan from Singapore's National Neuroscience Institute states that data was collected through in-person interviews using structured questionnaires.



Over the course of the study, 57 incident cases of Parkinson's disease were documented, and while caffeine was associated with a protective effect, reducing disease risk by 45 per cent, the benefits of black tea were not affected by caffeine content, wrote Tan and co-authors.



"Black tea, a caffeine-containing beverage, showed an inverse association with Parkinson's disease risk that was not confounded by total caffeine intake or tobacco smoking," wrote the authors.



"Ingredients of black tea other than caffeine appear to be responsible for the beverage's inverse association with Parkinson's disease," they concluded.

Tea Advisory Panel welcomes the results


Commenting on the study, Dr Ann Walker, a member of The Tea Advisory Panel (TAP) said that the latest research study was great news for all UK 'black tea' drinkers.



"In the past there seems to have been more of a focus by scientists reviewing the health benefits of green tea," she said.



She added that previous studies looking at tea drinking and Parkinson's disease risk did not differentiate between black tea and green tea, while the protective effect of tea were attributed to the caffeine content.



"In the current study, however, the beneficial effect of black tea did not appear to be influenced by caffeine intake, indicating that ingredients other than caffeine are responsible for black tea's protective effects," said Dr. Walker.



"A key difference between black tea and green tea lies in the types and amounts of flavonoids. Green teas contain more of the simple flavonoids called catechins. But when black tea is made, the catechins undergo oxidation resulting in the generation of more complex varieties, called thearubigins and theaflavins."


"The underlying mechanisms for this protective effect of black tea on Parkinson's disease remains unclear until further research is done. But drinking even one cup of black tea per day could help to reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease," she concluded.



Source: American Journal of Epidemiology

Published online ahead of print 20 December 2007, doi: doi:10.1093/aje/kwm338

"Differential Effects of Black versus Green Tea on Risk of Parkinson's Disease in the Singapore Chinese Health Study"

Almond Iced Tea

Difficulty: Easy
Ingredients

• 8 cups cold water
• 9  English Breakfast tea bags or 9 tsp loose tea
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1½ teaspoons pure almond extract
• Juice of 3 lemons
  

Method

1. Bring 2 cups of the water to a slow boil in a small saucepan. Add the tea bags, cover, and remove from the heat. Let steep for 10 minutes.
2. Remove the tea bags without squeezing them.
3. Pour the steeped tea into a 2 litre (4 pint) heatproof container. Add the sugar and stir or shake until it dissolves. Add the extracts and lemon juice and stir or shake to combine. Add the remaining 6 cups cold water and stir.
4. Let cool, then chill and serve over ice. Makes about 2 litres (4 pints