Drinking a cup of green tea a day may reduce the risk of developing lung cancer for both smokers and non-smokers, according to a new Taiwanese study.
Researchers said smokers and non-smokers alike who did not drink green tea were five times more likely to develop lung cancer when compared to people who consumed one cup a day. Smokers who didn’t drink green tea increased their risk 13-fold.
''The antioxidants may inhibit tumor growth," I-Hsin Lin, a master's degree student at Chung Shan Medical University in Taiwan, told WebMD. She presented her findings Tuesday at a lung cancer conference in Coronado, Calif.
The researchers studied 170 lung cancer patients and 340 healthy patients, quizzing them on their smoking histories, green tea consumption, and other lifestyle habits. Lin also found that green tea drinkers who are not genetically susceptible to lung cancer had a 66 percent reduced risk.
Lowering lung cancer risk is one in a long list of benefits derived from drinking green tea. It is also believed to reduce other types of cancer, ease depression in elderly, and even smooth wrinkles. But green tea drinking smokers shouldn’t feel they’re getting a free pass if they continue to light up.
"What the American Lung Association is really afraid of," Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association, told HealthDay, "is that people will look at this and think, 'Oh, well, I can smoke as long as I have a few cups of green tea.' Nothing could be further from the truth.
“Smoking is extremely toxic, obviously, and extremely detrimental to your health. And nothing changes this fact. So the most important thing here is that we don't want anyone to get the message that it's OK to smoke so long as I drink green tea."
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