A cohort study tracking 485,934 adults in China for a median of about nine years found that regular tea drinkers had roughly 11 percent lower risk of vascular disease than non-regular drinkers, with black tea and moderate-strength brews showing the most consistent protective association, according to a report in the Journal of Internal Medicine.
The study recorded 14,863 cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, pulmonary heart and peripheral artery disease events over the follow-up period. The lowest risk was seen among people who combined regular tea drinking with not smoking and high physical activity, suggesting tea's association, if real, works alongside other healthy habits rather than on its own.
A hotter cup, a different result
The study's more striking finding cuts the other way: people who said they drank their tea "burning hot" had a 16 percent higher risk of vascular disease than non-regular drinkers, a pattern researchers suggest could be linked to repeated thermal injury to the esophagus and blood vessels, though the mechanism remains unconfirmed. Temperature and drinking habits were self-reported and measured only once at the study's start, a limitation the authors acknowledge.
Outside experts, including a dietitian with the British Heart Foundation quoted by the Science Media Centre, cautioned against reading the results as proof that a daily cup protects the heart: the study is observational, meaning tea drinkers and non-drinkers likely differ in other ways — diet, income, overall lifestyle — that could explain part of the gap. The authors themselves frame the findings as an association worth further study, not a recommendation to start drinking tea for cardiovascular protection.
