A study of 486,000 adults found that regular tea drinkers had less heart and blood vessel disease, unless they drank it one particular way

Tea is the most widely consumed drink in the world after water, and studies have long hinted that it is good for the heart. Most of them could not say much about how people drink it. A team of researchers followed 485,934 adults in China for an average of about nine years, recording not only whether they drank tea but how much, what kind, how strong and how hot. Over that time, 14,863 of them developed heart or blood vessel disease.

Regular tea drinkers had about an 11% lower risk of vascular disease, a group that includes heart disease, stroke, pulmonary heart disease and peripheral artery disease. Among people who drank tea at least weekly, the lowest risk showed up at roughly six to eight cups a day.

There was one clear exception. People who said they drank their tea “burning hot” had about a 16% higher risk than people who did not drink tea regularly. The benefit seen in other tea drinkers did not appear for them.

The type of tea mattered too. Black tea showed more consistent links with lower risk than green tea, which runs against the common idea that green tea is the healthier choice. Tea of moderate strength was linked to the lowest risk.

Earlier research has not always agreed on the amounts. A 2022 meta-analysis in Frontiers in Nutrition that pooled 35 studies found that black tea was linked to lower coronary artery disease risk at modest amounts, but that more than four to six cups a day was linked to higher risk. The new study, far larger and with more detail on how people drink their tea, puts the low point higher.

The finding about temperature fits other evidence. In 2016, the World Health Organization’s cancer agency classified drinking very hot beverages, above about 65°C, as probably carcinogenic because of their link to cancer of the esophagus. The new study suggests very hot tea may carry a cost for blood vessels as well, though it did not test why.

The second finding is about the rest of daily life. Tea drinkers who also did not smoke and were physically active had the lowest risk of all, about 45% lower than inactive smokers who did not drink tea regularly. Tea on its own was linked to a modest difference; habits together made a much bigger one.

Why might tea help? Tea is rich in plant compounds called polyphenols, including catechins and, in black tea, theaflavins formed during processing, which have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects in laboratory studies. Regular tea drinkers may also differ from non-drinkers in diet and lifestyle in ways the study could not fully measure.

For tea drinkers, the practical takeaway is simple: letting tea cool for a few minutes before drinking it costs nothing. The researchers caution against treating six to eight cups as a target, since the study was not designed to set a recommended amount. What goes into a drink matters too, as research on coffee creamer showed, and so does the overall pattern of eating, as a study of 10 healthy diets and biological aging found.

There are limits to what this shows. The study is observational, so it cannot prove that tea lowers vascular risk. Tea intake was measured only once, at the start, and cup sizes were not standardized. The participants lived in China, where tea habits differ from those in Western countries, and the results may not apply everywhere.

Source

“Habitual tea consumption is associated with lower cardiovascular disease risk.” Journal of Internal Medicine, 2026.
DOI: 10.1111/joim.70172

Also cited

Meta-analysis of tea consumption and coronary artery disease risk. Frontiers in Nutrition, 2022.
DOI: 10.3389/fnut.2022.1021405

Loomis D, Guyton KZ, Grosse Y, et al. “Carcinogenicity of drinking coffee, mate, and very hot beverages.” The Lancet Oncology, 2016.
DOI: 10.1016/S1470-2045(16)30239-X