Named the link between drinking tea and diabetes

An invigorating drink in large quantities has an amazing effect.

Four cups of tea a day may help prevent diabetes, Chinese scientists say. However, according to them, the use of black, green or oolong tea is associated with a reduced risk of developing a type 2 form of the disease.

A new study has found that drinking plenty of tea – at least four cups a day – can help reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

The Chinese scientists behind these findings say that four or more cups of tea a day can reduce risk by 17% over 10 years. “Our results are impressive because they suggest that people can do something as simple as drinking four cups of tea a day to potentially reduce their risk of developing type 2 diabetes,” said study lead author Xiaying Li of the Wuhan University of Science and Technology. technologies.

The protective effect could be even greater if people added milk to their tea, Li said. Although she and her seven co-authors did not investigate the effects of milk in tea as part of their work, previous research has shown that dairy products may also have anti-diabetic effects.

“I think that milk will increase the effect of tea on diabetes. That is, tea with milk will be more effective, ”Lee said ahead of the presentation of the study results at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Stockholm.

The researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 19 previous studies of tea drinking and diabetes involving nearly 1.1 million adults in eight countries in the Americas, Asia or Europe, including one from the UK. The researchers found a “significant linear relationship” between drinking black, green or oolong tea – a traditional Chinese tea – and a reduced risk of developing diabetes.

Compared to non-tea drinkers, people who drank one, two, or three cups a day had a 4% lower risk, and those who drank four or more cups a day had a 17% lower risk. . Tellingly, the effect of tea exposure was the same for both sexes.

When asked why tea might protect against diabetes, Li said, “It’s possible that certain components of tea, such as polyphenols, can lower blood glucose levels, but sufficient amounts of these bioactive compounds may be required to be effective.”

About 4 million Britons have been diagnosed with diabetes. Of these, about 90% have type 2, which is associated with an unhealthy lifestyle, especially being overweight. The rest have type 1, an autoimmune disease that is unrelated to lifestyle and is usually diagnosed in childhood. Although the results of the research by Chinese scientists were not published in a medical journal, they were reviewed by the organizers of the Stockholm Conference.

Although the results are observational and do not prove that drinking tea reduces the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, there is evidence to suggest that it may contribute to this, Li said.