Looking for a good reason to commit to drinking more tea in the New Year? How about this: a new study shows a decreased risk for ovarian cancer in regular tea drinkers!
The study, conducted at Curtin University in Guanzhou, China, surveyed 1,000 different women (half of whom had a history of ovarian cancer) on their tea drinking habits. The control group, made up of women who had not suffered from ovarian cancer at any point in their life, was shown to contain women who were more likely (around 80%) to be regular tea drinkers.
So what kind of tea did the women with a reduced risk of ovarian cancer enjoy? It seems that the health benefits as they relate to this specific kind of cancer aren’t limited to use one type of brew. The women in the control group were regular drinkers of green, oolong and black teas. The more tea women reported drinking, the less likely they were to have any past history with ovarian cancer.
The correlation between drinking tea and reduced risk for ovarian cancer might be linked to other lifestyle choices as well, since tea drinkers could be more likely than their non-tea drinking counterparts to partake in healthy activities and diets. Still, the study opens a door to further exploring the potential for finding out how tea can become an important tool in cancer prevention.
Ovarian cancer is a particularly difficult form of cancer to overcome. Because of the location of the ovaries, early detection (which is usually key in the treatment of any kind of cancer) is extremely difficult. For most women, this type of cancer is detected in later stages, where treatment becomes more taxing and the prognosis increasingly worse.
Looking at how tea and lifestyle together decrease a risk for cancer opens exciting doors for developing new methods prevention. As further studies and trials develop, it’ll be interesting to see just how instrumental tea may be to preserving ovarian health. Until then, tea offers several other benefits and zero negative side effects, so it never hurts to drink up!