People often tout the health advantages of drinking green tea, but what about other forms of teas? A team of researchers has now found that drinking black tea may very well help lower one’s mortality risk.

Tea is said to be the “most generally consumed beverage on the earth,” second only to water. Even within the U.S., where one might think coffee is the king of beverages, people drank 3.8 billion gallons of tea in 2019 alone, 84% of which was black tea.

For his or her recent study, published within the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, a team of researchers checked out the association between tea consumption and mortality risk.

“Tea is steadily consumed worldwide, however the association of tea drinking with mortality risk stays inconclusive in populations where black tea is the major type consumed,” they wrote.

To search out out, the researchers checked out the U.K. Biobank data of 498,043 men and ladies aged 40 to 69 years who accomplished a questionnaire from 2006 to 2010. Among the many participants, 85% said they often drank tea, the American College of Physicians (ACP) noted in a news release. And 85% of the tea-drinkers said they drank black tea.

The researchers measured the participants’ self-reported tea intake, in addition to mortality from all causes and leading causes of death comparable to heart problems (CVD), cancer and respiratory disease.

In addition they checked out aspects comparable to the temperature of the tea, the common additives that folks used comparable to milk and sugar, and the genetic variants that influence people’s caffeine metabolism.

In an 11.2-year follow-up study, the researchers found that those that consumed higher tea intake had lower mortality risks, with those that drank two or more cups of tea per day having a 9-13% lower mortality risk in comparison with those that didn’t drink tea.

“Inverse associations were seen for mortality from all CVD, ischemic heart disease, and stroke,” the researchers wrote.

They observed this association “regardless” of the genetic variation in caffeine metabolism, their preferred tea temperature, whether or not they added milk or sugar, and evn in the event that they drank coffee too.

Researchers said this means that “tea, even at higher levels of intake, may be a part of a healthy food plan.”