Food gets all the focus on diet plans, but a couple of beverages are building an impressive resume for helping with disease prevention. It’s Stroke Prevention Month, so it’s a great time to point out that research suggests drinking both coffee and tea helps protect your body against stroke and dementia.
If you follow the guidelines of the study, you could find yourself needing to use the bathroom more often, but it might be worth it. Compared with those who did not drink tea and coffee, drinking 2 to 3 cups of coffee and 2 to 3 cups of tea per day was associated with a 32 percent lower risk of stroke and a 28 percent lower risk of dementia. It wasn’t a small sample, either. The study followed more than 360,000 adults over a 12-year period.
Because it was an observational study, cause and effect can’t be determined, as other variables inevitably influence health outcomes. But the potential health benefits of coffee and tea are also well-documented. Both are strong sources of polyphenols, which have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that fight against the buildup of free radicals that can cause disease.
And for those of you wondering, the assessment included decaffeinated versions, as well. About 16 percent of the participants reported only drinking decaffeinated coffees and teas. How strong the effect is compared to caffeinated versions cannot be determined from this study, but because decaf coffee and tea still have polyphenols, so it’s hard to imagine there isn’t some crossover effect.
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