Four Cups of Coffee or Tea May Help Lower Blood Pressure

If you don't belong to the group of Americans who drink more coffee than anyone else, you might want to start. Coffee addiction is real and maybe you should kick it up a notch as a new major study states that drinking four cups of coffee or  tea a day can lower one's blood pressure.

This new finding, which will be presented at the European Society of Hypertension in Milan, contradicts the previous finding that ties caffeine intake to high blood pressure or hypertension. The study conducted earlier by a Duke University Medical Center researcher revealed that on higher caffeine days the blood pressure went five points higher.

Reports according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention state that 1 in 3 U.S. adults i.e. nearly 68 million people, suffer from high blood pressure and this increases the risk of heart diseases and strokes. High blood pressure is most often referred to as a 'silent killer' as it has no warning signs of symptoms.

But the new finding by the Preventive and Clinical Investigations Centre in Paris,
conducted over a 10-year period,  states that heavy tea drinkers have lower blood pressure, pulse pressure and heart rate when compared to light drinkers, reports Express.Co.

The researchers monitored the intake of coffee and tea in 180,000 people aged between 16-95 years and based on this they divided the people into three categories, 'those who drank no coffee or tea  at all', 'those who drank between one and four cups a day', and those who drank more.

They noticed that those who consumed tea had greater benefits as they had lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings. They also had the lowest pulse pressure and heart rate, reports Daily Mail.

And slightly high blood pressure was noticed in the coffee lovers but non drinkers had the highest blood pressure readings, heart rate as well as highest pulse pressure reading.

According to the guidelines set by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, excessive consumption of coffee or other caffeine products should be limited.

Though the new finding does not suggest that coffee and tea consumption lowers the risk of high blood pressure, it suggests that it is not necessary for people with hypertension to reduce the intake of coffee or tea.

Author Bruno Pannier predicts that the flavonoids in tea could play an important role in relaxing blood vessels and lowering blood pressure.

"The vasorelaxing compounds included in these beverages might be involved in these results, something that has been suggested by the experimental data," he said.

The study made no difference between herbal tea, green tea and black tea.