Keep your brain healthy by sipping green tea or coffee
Add coffee and green tea to your diet and help lower your risk of a stroke.
A study, published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association, surveyed more than 83, 000 adults for 13 years about their coffee and green tea drinking habits. Researchers found that the more coffee or green tea participants drank, the lower their stroke risks.
“This is the first large-scale study to examine the combined effects of both green tea and coffee on stroke risks,” said Yoshihiro Kokubo, M.D., lead author of the study. “You may make a small but positive lifestyle change to help lower the risk of stroke by adding daily green tea to your diet.”
Specifically, the study found:
People who drank at least one cup of coffee daily had about a 20 percent lower risk of stroke compared to those who rarely drank it.
People who drank two to three cups of green tea daily had a 14 percent lower risk of stroke; those who had at least four cups had a 20 percent lower risk, compared to those who rarely drank it.
People who drank at least one cup of coffee or two cups of green tea daily had a 32 percent lower risk of brain hemorrhage, compared to those who rarely drank either beverage.
A cup of coffee or tea in Japan, where the study was performed, is about six ounces. The researchers aren’t sure exactly how coffee and tea affect stroke risk, but they believe both drinks have blood-thinning compounds.
“The regular action of drinking tea, coffee, largely benefits cardiovascular health because it partly keeps blood clots from forming,” Dr. Kokubo said.
Globally, coffee and tea are the most popular drinks after water.
