Drinking tea ‘can help reduce risk of cognitive decline in older people’

Drinking more tea could be an effective means of reducing a person's risk of cognitive decline as they grow older, according to new research.

The study, from the National University of Singapore, assessed 957 Chinese people aged 55 years or older, revealing that regular consumption of tea lowered their risk of cognitive decline by 50 percent.

Moreover, for carriers of the APOE e4 gene – who are known to be at an elevated risk of developing Alzheimer's disease due to their genetic makeup – the reduction in neurodegenerative impairment risk rose as high as 86 percent.

The neuroprotective role of tea consumption on cognitive function was not shown to be limited to a particular type of tea, provided that the tea was brewed from tea leaves. This means variants such as green, black or oolong tea can all be beneficial.

Feng Lei, an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore's Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, said: "The data from our study suggests that a simple and inexpensive lifestyle measure such as daily tea drinking can reduce a person's risk of developing neurocognitive disorders in late life."

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