A majority of individuals across the world drink either coffee or tea or both. Going by the results of a newly published study, coffee/tea drinkers may have some reason to cheer up. At a time when stroke and dementia have become an increasing global health concern and bring a heavy economic and social burden, the finding is that drinking coffee and tea separately or in combination were associated with lower risk of stroke and dementia. Intake of coffee alone or in combination with tea was associated with lower risk of post-stroke dementia.
According to a paper published in Plos Medicine journal, researchers from Tianjin Medical University in China studied 360,000 people who drank daily either two-to-three cups of coffee, three-to-five cups of tea, or four-to-six cups of a combination of both. The results found these people had the lowest risk for diseases such as stroke and dementia. Though previous studies have revealed the involvement of coffee and tea in the development of stroke and dementia, little is known about the association between the combination of coffee and tea and the risk of stroke, dementia, and post-stroke dementia. Therefore, the researchers aimed to investigate the associations of coffee and tea separately and in combination with the risk of developing stroke and dementia.
Drinking coffee or tea exclusively had a lower risk for both stroke and dementia, but those who drank a combination of several cups of both fared best in the study. This group of people had a 28% lower risk of dementia and 32% lower risk of stroke than those who drank neither beverage, according to the study. The information on the participants came from the UK Biobank, a database that contains anonymous health information from around 500,000 volunteers in the UK between 2006 and 2020. The study looked at participants between the ages of 50 and 74 who kept a running journal of their consumption of coffee and tea.
According to the study, 10,053 participants had at least one stroke and 5,079 participants developed dementia over the course of the study. Although other studies have reported health benefits from drinking coffee and tea, the researchers of the study noted that drinking the beverages and having the outcome were linked, not that the beverages themselves offered protection against these diseases. Experts have also said the study has its limits because the participants self-reported their data, which could lead to personal biases in their estimates.
“We cannot impute causality, and say ‘drinking more coffee or tea is good for your brain.’ What we can only say is that in this study, people who reported moderate coffee/tea drinking were less likely to have a stroke or dementia occur in the 10 years of follow-up,” Dr Lee H Schwamm, chair of the American Stroke Association Advisory Committee and chair in Vascular Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, told CNN.
The findings highlight a potential beneficial relationship between coffee and tea consumption and risk of stroke, dementia, and post-stroke dementia, although causality cannot be inferred. The study outcome may be of interest to clinicians involved in the prevention and treatment of stroke, dementia, and post-stroke dementia.
