People who drink dark tea daily have a substantially lower risk of developing diabetes, according to recent research. While it is well-documented that eating nutritious foods like vegetables, nuts and oats help to prevent diabetes, it might surprise many that increasing your fruit consumption may also be beneficial in the same way. However, a new study now suggests that drinking a cup of dark tea daily helps control blood sugar and may help reduce your risk for developing prediabetes and type 2 diabetes.
As a reminder, while prediabetes is like a warning sign that your body isn’t handling blood sugar as well as it should, type 2 diabetes is a condition characterized by insulin resistance where the body has trouble using glucose for energy.
In the study published in October 2023 in Diabetologia, researchers worked with 1,923 adults between the ages of 20 and 80. Fifty nine percent of participants had normal blood glucose levels while 23% were living with type 2 diabetes and 18% with prediabetes. Researchers examined the association between both the frequency and type of tea consumed and how that impacted excretion of glucose in the urine. The findings suggest that people who drank dark tea every day had more glucose excretions in their urine, a sign that their bodies might be getting rid of glucose more efficiently.
The study found that people who drank dark tea every day had a 53% lower risk of prediabetes and a 47% lower risk of type 2 diabetes compared to never-tea drinkers. This was after accounting for established risk factors known to drive the risk for diabetes, including age, gender, ethnicity and family history, lifestyle factors like BMI, activity level, alcohol consumption and smoking status.
Exciting, isn’t it?
Before you quickly reach for the tea kettle, however, please keep in mind that we’re not talking about simple black tea that you can get in the grocery store. Dark tea is a type of Chinese tea that has undergone a microbial fermentation process. Different from full-oxidized Chinese black tea and unoxidized Chinese green tea, dark tea became famous because it undergoes a post-production fermentation process. Instead of immediately packaging the tea after it’s made, tea leaves are kept in a controlled environment that’s a bit like a compost pile. Often referred to as “pile fermentation” or “wet fermentation,” the process involves piling the tea leaves in a controlled environment, where they are exposed to heat, moisture and microbes for an extended period of time. This fermentation process can last from several months to years, depending on the type of tea.