Drinking dark tea every day may help to mitigate type 2 diabetes risk and progression in adults through better blood sugar control, suggests new research at this year’s Annual Meeting of The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), Hamburg (2-6 Oct).

The study, by researchers from the University of Adelaide in Australia and Southeast University in China, found that compared with never tea drinkers, daily consumers of dark tea had 53% lower risk for prediabetes and 47% reduced risk for type 2 diabetes, even after taking into account established risk factors known to drive the risk for diabetes, including age, gender, ethnicity, body mass index (BMI), average arterial blood pressure, fasting plasma glucose, cholesterol, alcohol intake, smoking status, family history of diabetes and regular exercise.

“The substantial health benefits of tea, including a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, have been reported in several studies over recent years, but the mechanisms underlying these benefits have been unclear”, notes the study’s co-lead author Associate Professor Tongzhi Wu from the University of Adelaide and The Hospital Research Foundation Group Mid-Career Fellow.

    • @[email protected]
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      71 year ago

      Dark tea is made from dark tea leaves…simple !

      Jokes aside, it’s “normal” tea leaves as opposed to green tea or fruit infusions. Your standard bag / box of yorkshire tea / english breakfast etc

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        It’s a difference in how they are oxidized and the addition of herbs that changes the flavours, properties and benefits of green + black teas.

        Mashed potatoes and french fried come from the same plant, that does not mean they taste the same or have the same nutritional profile.

          • @[email protected]
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            21 year ago

            Black tea is oxydised, not fermented.

            The most notable and main example of fermented tea is Pu-Erh, which is evident the monent you smell it - to me its smell elicits strong cow farm associations, that some choose to call “earthy”. That said the tea is delicious.

          • @[email protected]
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            11 year ago

            I would be very surprised if this effect was exclusive to oxidized leaves as the title seems to imply, if the effect is real it is far more likely that all tea brewed from tea leaves will have this property. In fact I recall similar attributions to puerh, though i suspect that was more folklore than actual acience or medicine.

            • @[email protected]
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              11 year ago

              Agreed, there have already been studies regarding green tea helping with blood glucose and fat management. Black tea having the same benefits isn’t that surprising.

              • @[email protected]
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                11 year ago

                Actually, upon closer attention, the article is in fact talking about fermented tea, so likely Pu-Erh. Dark tea is used to refer to fermented tea apparently, and is not the same as black tea.

      • @StorminNorman
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        21 year ago

        Yeah, the UK would be crippled if it was a significant issue.

      • Pirky
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        11 year ago

        Been consistently drinking 2-4 mugs of tea a day for the past nearly 4 years. It’s not all dark tea, but it predominantly is. I haven’t had any issues with that either. knock on wood

    • @[email protected]
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      31 year ago

      Since the study did not constrain their diets, adding or not adding milk is an independent variable.

      But since the study also includes populations that are lactose intolerant, that may be a correlated factor they didn’t look at