Daily cup of tea may lower heart attack risk – Research

A new research has shown that drinking as little as a cup of tea everyday may be good for your heart.
According to the research, 35 percent of persons who drank a cup of tea everyday are less likely to have a heart attack or other major cardiovascular event, compared to nondrinkers.
The study also found 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, the researchers said.
Dr. Elliott Miller, who is an internal medicine physician and instructor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, said, “We found that moderate tea drinkers had a decreased progression of coronary artery calcium and a decreased incidence of cardiovascular events.”
Miller said the research which is an observational study couldn’t prove a cause-and-effect relationship between tea drinking and heart disease.
For the study, Miller and his team 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, Miller said.
The 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. The investigators also measured the calcium deposits in the blood vessels over five years by comparing earlier CT scans 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 didn’t drink tea. Tea drinkers — those who drank from one to three cups daily — also showed a decline in the calcium buildup in their arteries.