Tea drinking may reduce the incidence of type 2 diabetes, according to a study

 Moderate use of black, green, or oolong tea is linked to a decreased risk of type 2 diabetes, according to a study involving more than 1 million adults from eight different nations. The results suggest that drinking at least four cups of tea per day is associated with a 17% lower risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D) over an average period of 10 years, according to research presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes

(EASD) Annual Meeting this year in Stockholm, Sweden (September 19–23).

According to main author Xiaying Li of Wuhan University of Science and Technology in China, "our results are intriguing because they imply that people can do something as easy as drinking four cups of tea a day to potentially lower their chance of acquiring type 2 diabetes."

        While it has long been recognised that drinking tea frequently may be healthy due to the numerous antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anticarcinogenic components it contains, it has been less obvious how tea consumption and the risk of T2D are related. Cohort studies and meta-analyses that have been published so far have presented conflicting results. To clarify the connection between tea drinking and future T2DM risk, researchers carried out a cohort study and a dose-response meta-analysis.

      First, they looked at 5,199 participants (2583 men and 2616 women; average age, 42) from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), who were enrolled in 1997 and followed up with in 2009 and had no prior history of T2D. The CHNS is a multicenter prospective study that examines inhabitants from nine provinces' socioeconomic conditions as well as their physical and mental health.

        Participants initially completed questionnaires about their food and drink intake as well as information about their lifestyle choices, including how often they exercised, smoked, and drank. 2,379 (46%) participants reported drinking tea overall, and 522 (10%) persons had T2D by the conclusion of the trial.

Researchers discovered that tea users had a lower incidence of T2D after controlling for characteristics like age, sex, and physical inactivity.The researchers then conducted a systematic evaluation of all cohort studies examining the relationship between tea consumption and the risk of T2D in adults (aged 18 or older) up until September 2021. The dose-response meta-analysis comprised 19 cohort studies totaling 1,076,311 participants from eight different nations [1].

They investigated the potential effects of various tea consumption patterns (less than one cup per day, one to three cups per day, and four or more cups per day), gender (male and female), and research region (Europe and America, or Asia), on the risk of T2D. Overall, the meta-analysis discovered a linear relationship between daily tea consumption and the risk of T2D.Adults who drank 1-3 cups of tea per day had a 4% lower risk of T2D than those who didn't, while those who drank at least 4 cups per day had a 17% lower risk.

The relationships were shown regardless of the type of tea people drank, whether they identified as male or female, or where they resided, indicating that the quantity of tea taken may be more important than any other factor in explaining the associations.

Our results imply that drinking tea is beneficial in lowering the risk of type 2 diabetes, but only at large levels (at least 4 cups a day), adds Li. However, more research is needed to pinpoint the precise dosage and processes underlying these observations.

She adds, "It's likely that some tea ingredients, such polyphenols, can lower blood sugar levels, but this impact might require a significant quantity of these bioactive substances. Additionally, the fact that we did not examine increased tea intake may help to explain why our cohort analysis did not reveal a link between type 2 diabetes and tea drinking." Traditional Chinese tea known as oolong is produced from the same plant as green tea.