The Mrs. Sent this to me for obvious reasons. I’m a heavy tea drinker.
Men who are heavy tea drinkers may be more likely to develop prostate cancer, according to new research.
A team from Glasgow University tracked the health of more than 6,000 male volunteers over a period of 37 years.
They found men who drank over seven cups of tea per day had a 50% higher risk of developing prostate cancer than moderate and non tea drinkers.
Now what does it mean?
The team said it did not know if tea was a risk factor or if drinkers lived to ages where cancer was more common….Volunteers were asked to complete a questionnaire about their usual consumption of tea, coffee, alcohol, smoking habits and general health, and attended a screening examination.
Just under a quarter of the men included in the study were heavy tea drinkers.
Of these, 6.4% developed prostate cancer during a follow-up of up to 37 years.
Researchers found that men who drank more than seven cups of tea per day had a significantly increased risk of prostate cancer compared to those who drank no tea or less than four cups per day.
This is one thing that really bugs me:
He said: “Most previous research has shown either no relationship with prostate cancer for black tea or some preventive effect of green tea.
“We don’t know whether tea itself is a risk factor or if tea drinkers are generally healthier and live to an older age when prostate cancer is more common anyway.”
“We found that heavy tea drinkers were more likely not to be overweight, be non alcohol-drinkers and have healthy cholesterol levels.
“However, we did adjust for these differences in our analysis and still found that men who drank the most tea were at greater risk of prostate cancer.”
Green tea, black tea, oolong tea, et al are all the leaves of the same plant, just processed differently. The claimed health benefits of green tea seem to root themselves in the fact that most of the tea studies have been conducted in the Far East where green teas are the preferred beverage. Also it should be noted that a Far Eastern diet is drastically different, as well a drastically different genetic stock. The same could be said about Scotland. Some of my ancestors are from that island, but just some of them, and I’m sure I couldn’t pinpoint all the various matings of people in my direct genetic line for the migratory people who eventually wound up in Maine and created me. How many of the people in the study could trace their ancestry to Scotland for say the last few hundred years?
Its an interesting study, but it smells of me like a study pointing out that eating Haggis and cheese burgers decrease the risk of sickle-cell anaemia. Correlation does not always mean causation.
Now how about a cup of tea?
Coffee’s bad!
Coffe’s good!
Fat is bad!
Good fat is good!
I’m so weary of being told every fifteen years that “ZOMG EVERYTHING WE KNEW WAS WRONG AND WE’RE ALL GONNA DIIIIIIIIIEEEEEE”
I’m laughing the hardest in that EVERYBODY would put a tub of margarine on the table for a meal, and even restaurants would advertise when margarine would be used as a “Healthy Alternative”.
Of course that “Healthy” Margarine is just a tub of EVIL TRANSFATS!!!!
Meh, fat is fat. Don’t eat too much of it…also don’t eat too little of it. Get some exercise and take care of yourself.
That’s the bottom line, is that people don’t want to take care of themselves. They want to pop a pill and look like a movie star until their end of days.
I can count the number of cups of tea I have had in my life on two hands. Had the big “P-C” 9 years ago. So tell the dear Mrs. that it probably the fact that you ARE drinking tea that you have not followed in my footsteps! 🙂 Oh, and get a PSA test every year!! Regardles of what the Big O’s HHS dept. says, savet my behind!
Sounds like one of those DirecTV commercials.
Soooo…. they’re saying that tea drinkers live to a ripe old age…..old enough where they can expect prostate cancer?
Healthy Weight and Exercise is a contributing factor to dying of old age!