Daily one cup of tea may lower heart attack risk: study

Drinking just one cup of tea a day may lower your risk of heart attack and stroke, a new study has claimed. Researchers found that people who drank a cup of tea each day were 35 per cent less likely to have a heart attack or other major cardiovascular event, compared to nondrinkers.

The findings by researchers from Johns Hopkins Hospital in US show that tea drinkers were less likely to have calcium buildup in the heart’s coronary arteries. Calcium deposits have been linked to serious conditions, such as heart disease and stroke, researchers said.

“We found that moderate tea drinkers had a decreased progression of coronary artery calcium and a decreased incidence of cardiovascular events,” said Elliott Miller from Johns Hopkins Hospital.

font-size: 10pt;">Researchers looked at data from more than 6,000 men and women enrolled in an ongoing study that began in 2000. At the beginning of the study, all of the volunteers were free of heart disease, ‘HealthDay’ reported.

Researchers tracked the records of the men and women to see who had a heart attack, stroke, chest pain, or died from other types of heart disease over 11 years.

They also measured the calcium deposits in the blood vessels over five years by comparing earlier Computerised Tomography scans (CT scan) to later ones.

The study found that people who drank a cup of tea a day had about one-third less risk of a major heart disease event during the study period than people who did not drink tea.