Drinking two or more cups of tea a day was linked to a 9 to 13 percent lower risk of death, according to a study that tracked nearly half a million people for over a decade.
Quick Take
- A study of 498,043 UK adults found regular tea drinkers had lower rates of death from any cause, including heart disease and stroke.
- The benefit showed up at two or more cups a day and held true no matter the temperature, or whether people added milk or sugar.
- Researchers tracked participants for years after they filled out a one-time survey about their tea habits between 2006 and 2010.
- The study shows a strong link, not proof that tea itself causes longer life.
A Massive Study Finds Tea Drinkers Living Longer
Researchers at the National Cancer Institute analyzed data from the UK Biobank, a long-running health project tracking adults ages 40 to 69. The findings, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in August 2022, showed that people who drank tea regularly had a lower risk of dying from any cause compared to non-tea drinkers during the follow-up period.
The protection wasn’t limited to overall death rates. Tea drinkers also showed lower rates of death specifically from cardiovascular disease, ischemic heart disease, and stroke. For a drink most people grab out of habit rather than for health reasons, that’s a striking pattern to see across such a large group of adults.
Two Cups Seemed to Be the Sweet Spot
People who drank at least two cups daily saw a 9 to 13 percent lower risk of death compared to those who skipped tea altogether, according to the National Cancer Institute’s summary of the findings. That’s a meaningful number when you consider how many people already sip tea every morning without thinking twice about it.
What makes the result stand out even more is its consistency. The lower risk showed up whether people liked their tea piping hot or lukewarm, whether they added milk or sugar, and regardless of genetic differences in how their bodies process caffeine. A separate study on black tea specifically, highlighted by the National Institutes of Health, found similar reduced death rates among regular drinkers.
Why Scientists Won’t Call This Proof Yet
This was an observational study, meaning researchers watched what people already did rather than assigning some to drink tea and others not to. That matters because tea drinkers might simply live healthier lives overall, exercise more, or smoke less, and those habits could be doing some of the real work behind the numbers.
Tea habits were also recorded just once, at the study’s start, based on what people remembered and reported themselves. Habits can change over a decade or more of follow-up, and memory isn’t perfect. Scientists call this a limitation, not a reason to dismiss the finding, but it’s why researchers stop short of calling tea a cure.
This Fits a Much Bigger Pattern in Nutrition Science
This isn’t a one-off result. A broader review combining 38 studies and nearly 2 million people found that the heaviest tea drinkers had about 10 percent lower all-cause mortality and 14 percent lower cardiovascular mortality compared to light or non-drinkers. An earlier analysis of 22 studies covering more than 856,000 people found similar drops in coronary disease, stroke, and cardiac death among tea drinkers.
Still, no large randomized trial has ever tested tea against a placebo drink over many years to nail down cause and effect. That’s the missing piece in nutrition science generally, since it’s hard to get thousands of people to drink a prescribed beverage for a decade under controlled conditions. Until that kind of trial exists, cohort studies like this one remain the best evidence available.
What This Means for Your Next Cup
None of this means tea replaces medication, exercise, or a doctor’s advice on heart health. But for the millions of Americans who already drink tea daily, this research offers reassurance that the habit lines up with better odds of a longer life. Common sense says a cheap, calorie-free drink tied to lower mortality risk, across multiple large studies, deserves a place in a heart-healthy routine.
A major study has revealed a possible health benefit of drinking tea regularly, linking the popular beverage to a lower risk of blood vessel-related diseases.
Published in the Journal of Internal Medicine, the research followed 485,934 adults in China for an average of 9.05… pic.twitter.com/43x3Cghkjy
— The Public Purview (TPP) (@publicpurviewpk) October 22, 2026
Tea is already the second most consumed beverage on earth after water, and that popularity isn’t likely to fade given findings like these. The bigger question for researchers now is pinning down exactly which compounds in tea, and how much of them, drive the benefit so future studies can test it directly.
Sources:
biobank.ndph.ox.ac.uk, acpjournals.org, bb30.ndph.ox.ac.uk, heart.bmj.com, bgnes.com, ars.usda.gov
