Tea and Telomeres

I blame my Anglophilism in part on my mother’s tea parties when I was a little girl. I still have a cup of English Breakfast tea every morning, and I sip green tea in the afternoon. (Never, ever coffee… shudder.) So of course I was intrigued when multiple news sites picked up on a study purporting to show that tea drinkers may be 5 years biologically younger than their actual age (and presumably younger than you Java Joe types). The results appear in the January issue of the British Journal of Nutrition. (Now, now--let’s not have any snide jokes about how 'British nutrition' is an oxymoron. Yes, there’s little nutritious value in Spotted Dick or Toad in the Hole, but overall, British cuisine has come quite a long way in the past few decades. I for one am delighted that the wonderful Pret A Manger sandwich chain and Wagamama noodle shops have arrived on our shores, and hope that Chicago will be next for colonization!)

At any rate, I looked up the study and found that it has the rather racy title, “Chinese tea consumption is associated with longer telomere length in elderly Chinese men.” Yowza! Aren’t their wives lucky!  But seriously, I read that telomeres are “endcaps on chromosomes,” and shortened telomeres are not such a good thing because they lead to a slowdown in the division of cells.  (Sort of like split ends, right?)  Three cups of black or green tea a day appeared to have a positive effect, preventing those Chinese men’s, um, telomeres from shriveling up.

While the study doesn’t say anything about making Wasp women appear 5 years younger, I’m guessing my cells are fresh and youthful from my lifelong tea consumption. I’m going to go grab a cup of green tea right now just to make sure. Might I suggest that you do the same?