Are You Drinking Tea At The Right Temperature? New Health Research Says It Matters More Than You Think

 

If you like your tea hot, here’s why you may want to chill for a few minutes.

Drinking tea is more than just a cozy daily ritual—study after study has shown that a cup of tea a day can provide plenty of health benefits, from reducing inflammation to supporting your gut microbiome.

But a new study got down to the nitty-gritty of how different tea preparations and habits may impact cardiovascular health—and it turns out, how you take your tea may be linked to your heart health.

What the Tea Study Found

The study—published in The Journal of Internal Medicine—followed 485,934 participants for nearly a decade and tracked their tea drinking, smoking, and physical activity habits, along with their experience of vascular disease. And no surprise: Regular tea drinking (especially when combined with increased physical activity and avoiding smoking) was linked with lower incidence of vascular disease.

That’s definitely not a shocker. “Tea contains powerful plant compounds called polyphenols that may help protect our blood vessels,” says Lauri Wright, PhD, RDN, LD/N, FADA, director of Nutrition Programs and associate professor of the University of South Florida’s College of Public Health. “Polyphenols have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties and have been linked to improved function of the lining of our blood vessels, which can help regulate blood flow and blood pressure.”

But there was one surprising twist: Participants who reported that their tea was scalding hot were actually more likely to have vascular disease than those who enjoyed the tea a little cooler. Here’s exactly how to brew your daily cup (or cups!) to max out your cardiovascular health.

Key Takeaways to Max Your Tea Benefits

This is an observational study, so these particular tea-brewing habits are correlated with potential heart benefits—but the study didn’t prove that they specifically caused the risk of vascular disease or cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes to increase or decrease. Still, it doesn’t hurt to try your tea these ways to get a few extra benefits from your delicious daily cuppa.

Let your tea cool a bit before you drink

In the study, people who drank scalding hot tea were 16% more likely to have cardiovascular disease, compared to people who drank it at cooler temperatures.

That doesn’t mean you have to drink—or brew it—over ice. “Temperature has been found to affect the stability of some of tea’s beneficial compounds,” Wright says. “But there’s an important distinction between brewing tea with hot water and drinking tea while it’s still scalding. Hot water actually helps extract beneficial polyphenols from tea leaves, so we shouldn’t assume that hot brewing destroys tea’s benefits. My advice is simple—enjoy your tea warm but let it cool enough to sip comfortably.”