/ 1 January 2002

Drinking tea is good for heart patients, says study

DRINKING tea is good for people suffering from cardiovascular diseases because it increases their chances for survival, according to a study scheduled to be release on Tuesday.

The study conducted Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre in Boston shows that people who have survived a heart attack and proceeded to drink a lot of tea had a mortality rate 44% lower than heart attack survivors who did not drink tea at all in the first three and a half years following the attack.

Moderate tea consumers had a mortality rate 28% lower than those who shunned the beverage, according to the study. The health benefits of tea have been reported in numerous studies in recent years, but among healthy individuals the evidence is actually mixed,” said Kenneth Mukamal, an author of the study.

”The greatest benefits of tea consumption have been found among patients who already have cardiovascular disease,” he added. The study, conducted on 1 900 patients in their 60s, will appear in the Journal of the American Heart Association. ? Sapa-AFP