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.
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.
Tea expert Dr Tim Bond of the Tea Advisory Panel (TAP) has shared a simple daily step that could help take care of your ticker – and many Brits are already doing it.
According to Dr Bond, consuming black tea has multiple health benefits.
Speaking to Express.co.uk, he said: “It turns out that enjoying a cup of regular black tea has heart and blood pressure benefits thanks to a little-known but mighty compound called thearubigins.
“The news comes at a critical time, given the WHO’s scary statistics on cardiovascular disease, which caused a third of deaths globally in 2019, making it the world’s leading cause of death.”
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.
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.