Drink This Daily To Protect Your Heart And Lower The Blood Pressure- Experts
Drinking 20 cups of this beverage a week is the optimal amount to reap the health benefits, an expert said Experts.
Heart health is a huge problem in the UK, with cardiovascular disease accounting for around a quarter of all deaths every year. This includes conditions and diseases such as coronary heart disease, heart failure and strokes.
And according to the British Heart Foundation, around 7.6 million people in the UK are currently living with cardiovascular disease, with this number expected to rise.
RelatedPosts
There are many contributing factors that can put you at risk for cardiovascular disease, including your diet, how often you exercise and whether you smoke.
Making the relevant lifestyle changes could therefore help you slash your risk. These might seem difficult to take on board, but there is evidence to suggest that drinking a popular hot drink daily could also help.
So, why is tea so heart healthy? Dr Bond said that tea contains thearubigins which are a type of flavan-3-ol in the flavonoid group of polyphenols.
Dr Bond said drinking black tea could even help lower blood pressure (Image: Getty)
These substances are known for their powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, he said.
Dr Bond continued: “Their health benefits come from an action in the blood vessels, reducing inflammation, relaxing smooth muscle, and dilating the arteries.
“Blood pressure is one of the key areas of health that we’ve found thearubigins could influence.
“A research review that we recently undertook found that thearubigins in some laboratory studies improve glucose and insulin regulation and improve digestion as well as inhibiting some cancer cells.”
Brewed black tea can contain 115mg of flavan-3-ols per 100g.
For comparison, other flavonoid-rich foods and drinks contain:
Green tea – 54 mg per 100g
Apples – 9.3 mg per 100g
Pears – 6.8 mg per 100g
Raspberries – 5.8 mg per 100g
Strawberries – 4.6 mg per 100g.
“In black tea, thearubigins account for as much as 70 percent (81.3 mg/100 g) of the flavan-3-ols,” he said.
It’s the aeration process used to make black tea that gives it higher concentrations of thearubigins than other types of tea, according to Dr Bond.
He added: “With mounting evidence for the health benefits of tea flavonoids, including thearubigins, it’s worrying that fewer than a fifth (17 percent) are hitting the optimal tea target of more than 20 cups a week to achieve the ideal flavonoid intake.
“So, for the sake of our hearts, let’s all take time out to enjoy a regular brew.”
His advice was backed by a 2022 study of more than 500,000 people, published in Annals of Internal Medicine.
It found that drinking tea was linked to lower rates of death from cardiovascular disease (CVD), ischemic heart disease, stroke, and respiratory disease, and even cancer.
