Diabetes Rate Lower In Black Tea-Drinking Countries: Study

Black tea might result in a lower risk of diabetes, as a new study in the journal BMJ Open shows.

In the study, researchers from Data Mining International in Switzerland found an interesting and important fact that most people in countries fond of black tea-drinking have relatively lower rates of diabetes and some disease caused by diabetes.

The study analyzed the data on black tea consumption and disease rates coming from 50 countries that were in the World Health Survey in 2009. The researchers wanted to investigate the potential diseases that were linked to black tea consumption. They had looked at diseases including diabetes, heart disease, cancer, respiratory disease and infectious disease.

Researchers noticed that in countries where a large proportion of people love drinking black tea-- like Ireland, where nearly an average of 4.4 pounds of black tea are consumed by each person every year, the same situations in Turkey and United Kingdom  -- the prevalence of diabetes are at the lowest levels, compared to other countries.

In addition, in some countries like Mexico, Morocco, Brazil, China and South Korea, people drank the less amount of black tea in the study. All of these countries also have the relatively low levels of prevalence of diabetes. As a Chinese, I know clearly that plenty of people across my country are fond of drinking black tea. Many people around me are a little "addicted" to black tea. Of course, the majority of them have normal sugar levels and slim figures all their lifetime.

Some people may argue that it may be too early to say that black tea could actually have protective effect against diabetes. It seems to them that such a conclusion just doesn't make sense for some caveats existed in the new study:

For instance, the quality and consistency of record keeping among the 50 countries analyzed may vary, while it is common sense that results at the population level may not be true at the individual level.

The above caveats are reasonable to some extent, but "the findings are consistent with previous studies that have also suggested a link," study researchers emphasized.However, researchers failed to find an association between other diseases and black tea consumption.

Obviously, this is not the first time that tea-drinking has been linked with health benefits. So why not consider increasing your black tea consumption for better health?


About the author

Peizhou Liao is a doctoral student at Emory University. He is pursuing a degree in biostatistics, for he have so much passion for applications of statistical theories and methods on biological sciences.