This content originally appeared on On a regular basis Health. Republished with permission.
By Lisa Rapaport
A every day cup of dark tea may make it easier to keep up healthy blood sugar levels and reduce the chance of developing diabetes, a brand new study suggests.
For the study, researchers examined data on diabetes diagnoses, blood sugar levels, and lab tests showing how well the body can process sugars for 1,923 adults in China who either didn’t drink tea in any respect, or who exclusively consumed one variety of tea resembling green tea, black tea, or a beverage often known as dark tea — which, unlike other varieties of tea, undergoes microbial fermentation during processing.
Overall, individuals who drank tea every day were 28 percent less more likely to have diabetes than participants who didn’t drink tea in any respect, in line with study findings presented on the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) Annual Meeting in Hamburg, Germany. Each day tea drinkers were also 15 percent less more likely to have prediabetes, a condition that develops when blood sugar levels are barely elevated but not high enough for a full-blown diabetes diagnosis.
Which Form of Tea Is Best for Diabetes Prevention?
When scientists looked specifically at what variety of tea people drank, they found dark tea had the largest impact on diabetes risk, reducing the chances of this condition by 47 percent and cutting the possibilities of prediabetes by 53 percent.
“Habitual tea consumption, particularly dark tea, was related to increased urinary glucose excretion and reduced insulin resistance,” says study co-author Tongzhi Wu, MD, PhD, an associate professor at Adelaide Medical School in Australia.
“These actions are useful for glycemic control, and can have contributed to reduced risk of prediabetes and diabetes in the dead of night tea drinkers,” Dr. Wu adds.
Why Might Tea Help Prevent Diabetes?
When people excrete more glucose, or sugars, of their urine, it could possibly be one indication that their body does a very good job of maintaining healthy blood sugar levels, Wu says. Urinary glucose excretion was significantly higher in every day tea drinkers than individuals who didn’t drink tea in any respect, and higher still for individuals who consumed dark tea.
In contrast, insulin resistance, or an inability to make use of the hormone insulin to convert sugars into energy, can indicate the body is struggling to administer blood sugar effectively. Drinking any variety of tea was related to a lower risk of insulin resistance, while the chance was reduced further with every day consumption — and even moreso with dark tea.
The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how drinking tea basically or dark tea particularly might directly influence blood sugar levels or diabetes risk. It’s also unclear if results from a population in China, where tea consumption is commonplace, might apply to people from other countries where tea isn’t as popular or individuals from other racial or ethnic groups.
Even so, the study adds to an already large body of evidence linking tea consumption, including dark tea, to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, says Erin Palinski-Wade, RD, CDCES, a nutritionist who works with diabetes patients, who wasn’t involved in the brand new study.
Many teas are wealthy in antioxidants that may help reduce inflammation, a condition that’s linked to the event of type 2 diabetes, Palinski-Wade says. Results from the brand new study and other research point to health advantages from quite a lot of teas including green tea and black tea along with dark tea, Palinski-Wade says. “This is very true when [unsweetened] tea replaces sugar-rich beverages resembling sodas and flavored coffee drinks.”