Magic Brew for Your Heart

Another study finds tea's flavonoids prevent blood vessel damage

By Kathleen Doheny
HealthScoutNews Reporter

THURSDAY, April 25 (HealthScoutNews) -- Yet another study has found drinking tea is good for your heart, particularly in reducing death from heart attacks.

Getting the credit, once again, are tea's flavonoids -- antioxidants that help prevent blood vessel damage.

In this latest study, conducted in the Netherlands, heavy tea drinkers who indulged in more than three cups of black tea a day had about half the risk of a heart attack of those who didn't sip the stuff. And when the heavy tea drinkers did have a heart attack, they had less than a third the risk of dying from it, compared to those who didn't drink tea.

For the study, published in the May issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers evaluated 4,807 men and women participating in the Rotterdam Study, an ongoing evaluation of Dutch residents over age 55.

"The strongest association was with tea and prevention of cardiac death, not tea and prevention of heart attacks," says Lenore J. Launer, an investigator at the National Institute on Aging who worked with the Netherlands research team. During the follow-up period of 5.5 years, on average, there were 146 reported heart attacks, and 30 were fatal.

The tea's flavonoids, which are substances that act as antioxidants to undo cell damage, are thought to help preserve cardiovascular health by preventing excess blood vessel damage, even in those with heart disease.

Based on this study, Launer wouldn't recommend people change their tea-drinking habits.

"It's another study that reinforces the idea that diet can contribute to heart disease," she says. She hopes the study will encourage people to evaluate their diet, along with other lifestyle issues, such as lack of exercise, to reduce their risk of heart attack.

Another expert also stops short of recommending any change in tea-drinking habits based on this latest research.

"This study seems to me very preliminary," says Dr. Zi-Jian Xu, an attending cardiologist at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center.

Based on the study, he would not recommend people who don't drink tea -- healthy hearts or not -- start drinking just to reduce heart attack risk. Nor would he advise those who already drink tea and are having no ill effects to give it up. More studies need to be done, he adds.

Since the early 90s, several studies have focused on tea drinking and heart health, Launer says, and the conclusions have sometimes been contradictory.

Initial studies finding benefits from a food or vitamin are sometimes followed by studies that show no benefit or even adverse effects, Xu adds.

And, he notes, there were initial studies that found vitamin E supplements were good for the heart, but subsequent studies found no benefit or even adverse effects.

Teas that contain caffeine can also lead to problems for some people, he adds, sometimes causing palpitations or abnormal rhythms.

What To Do: For a daily nutrition tip to boost heart health or overall health, see the American Dietetic Association. For more information on heart health, see the American Heart Association.

SOURCES: Lenore J. Launer, Ph.D., chief, neuroepidemiology unit, Laboratory of Epidemiology, Demography and Biometry, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md.; Zi-Jian Xu, M.D., Ph.D., assistant clinical professor, medicine and cardiovascular disease, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, and attending cardiologist, Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica, Calif.; May 2002 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

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