Want to reduce your risk of diabetes? Drink tea!

Tea is one of the world’s most popular drinks but having a single cup each day could do a lot more for you than just giving you your caffeine fix. Drinking dark tea every day can reduce your risk of diabetes. But how is that possible?

The study was conducted by researchers from  Australia’s University of Adelaide as well as researchers from China’s Southeast University and they discovered that dark tea has unique properties that help control blood sugar levels. 

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The researchers presented their conclusions during the Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes according to a press release on the study and the authors explained why dark tea had a protective effect. 

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Study co-author Associate Professor Tongzhi Wu noted that drinking dark tea daily was able to help the body control its blood sugar levels through “increased glucose excretion in urine.” So tea really just helps you pee out more sugar. 

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Increased excretion of glucose improved insulin resistance according to Wu, who added that “benefits were most pronounced among daily dark tea drinkers.” However, why dark tea works so well to reduce diabetes risk is unknown. 

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The press release on the study’s findings suggested that the benefits of dark tea may lie in the unique way that it is produced. This process involves microbial fermentation and it may yield potent anti-inflammatory bioactive compounds. 

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Wu noted in his statement that the study’s findings suggested the bioactive compounds in dark tea may “lead directly or indirectly to modulate glucose excretion in the kidneys,” adding that the effect mimicked a new anti-diabetic drug.  

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Dark tea also proved to have protective effects on both the heart and kidneys according to Wu, who also explained that previous research had shown that one benefit of tea was its ability to reduce the risks of cardiovascular disease. 

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The study included 1923 adults with 562 male participants and 1361 female participants that ranged in age from 20-80 and lived across eight provinces in China. 436 of those in the study were diabetic or prediabetic while 1135 participants had normal blood sugar. 

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Participants included people who ranged from drinking tea daily to those who didn’t and the researchers found that participants who drank dark tea once daily had a 53% lower risk of prediabetes and a 47% lower risk of developing diabetes. 

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The study controlled for several factors including age, gender, and ethnicity. The study also tracked lifestyle clinical factors like one’s body mass index, exercise, family history of diabetes, smoking, alcohol intake, fasting plasma glucose, and blood pressure. 

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Participants who drank tea were asked about the types of tea they consumed as well as how often they drank tea. This is how the researchers were able to determine that a cup of dark tea each day provided the best protection against diabetes. 

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“Our findings suggest that drinking dark tea every day has the potential to lessen type 2 diabetes risk and progression through better blood sugar control,” study co-author Zilin Sun explained in a statement attached to the study press release. 

“When you look at all the different biomarkers associated with habitual drinking of dark tea, it may be one simple step people can easily take to improve their diet and health,” Sun added. But where will the researchers go from here?

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The group of researchers are already conducting a double-blind study on the effects of dark tea consumption in the hope that they will be able to replicate their initial findings and shed light on how effective the drink is at controlling blood sugar levels. 

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