Humble morning cuppa can cut diabetes risk and reduce depression, expert says
Recent research has found that drinking just one cup of kombucha, a fermented tea drink that has become trendy, a day, can lead to increased blood sugar levels. While this is positive news, one health expert has informed there's another popular beverage is even better at slashing the risk of diabetes - and says more research is needed.
More than 5million people in the UK are living with diabetes, which is an all-time high, according to Diabetes UK. In addition, more than 2.4million people are at an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, based on blood sugar levels.
This is due to a number of different factors - from income and education to access to healthy food and healthcare. If you have type 2 diabetes, you are at increased risk of developing other conditions - including heart disease, stroke, eye and kidney problems.
One drink that could help lower blood sugar levels, and therefore decrease the risk of developing diabetes, is black tea. That's right, your humble morning cuppa isn't just delicious, but it's good for you. According to a health expert, it's also been more widely researched than kombucha.
Health researcher, chemist and tea expert Dr Tim Bond, from the Tea Advisory Panel, told The Mirror: "The health benefits of black tea, with or without milk, have been extensively studied compared with those of kombucha. The humble cuppa, aka black tea, is a healthy drink containing a range of bioactive constituents, particularly flavonoids, including flavan-3-ols (catechins) and theaflavins and thearubigins.
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"These compounds are well established flavonoids and a recent systematic review of the scientific literature, including epidemiological studies and meta-analyses, demonstrates that black tea and its bioactive flavonoids, caffeine and L-theanine have numerous health benefits, including the maintenance of cardiovascular, metabolic, immune and cognitive health as well as being beneficial for those people with diabetes."
But that's not all, the review also found that black tea "benefits mental and cognitive health, reducing stress and depression, improving memory in older people". And if you needed any more reasons to drink your cup of tea in the morning, it also improves mood and alertness, thanks to the combination of caffeine and -theanine. He added: "Tea has established cardiovascular benefits, improving cholesterol levels and dilating the blood vessels and reducing cardiovascular events including stroke.
"Black tea can also reduce blood sugar in both healthy and pre-diabetic people with the polyphenol content thought to contribute to the reduced risk of type 2 diabetes observed in various studies.
"Research studies also indicate a benefit of tea drinking on bone health with two to three cups daily associated with a reduction in hip fracture. Black tea may also benefit gut health as a pre-biotic, shifting the gut bacteria towards a healthier mix."
That being said, kombucha, a fermented drink made with tea, sugar, bacteria and yeast, has also been found to be blood pressure lowering, antibacterial, antioxidant and have glucose-lowering effects. But Dr Bond warns that human studies to date have been small.
He added: "This latest study evaluating the impact of kombucha in people with diabetes was also a very small preliminary four-week placebo-controlled study involving only 12 people which found that the specific kombucha beverage used in the study lowered blood glucose. Though the findings are interesting they are not sufficiently robust to recommend that people with diabetes drink kombucha and more research is needed."
In addition, kombucha, unlike black tea with no added sugar, isn't necessarily sugar free. Dr Bond added: "Whilst the sugar in the brew feeds the bacteria and yeast and the sugar content falls in proportion to the duration of the fermentation there is still some sugar remaining in the final brew."
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