_{5th June 2012}

Drinking four or more cups of tea can lower the risk of middle-aged related diabetes

The British habit of tea-drinking can help lower the risk of Type 2 diabetes - but only if you drink four or more cups a day.

A study of European populations found that countries that drank four cups a day - the British average - had a 20% lower risk of developing the illness.

Tea drinking ranged from an average of none a day in Spain to four a day in the UK.

The study found that benefits seemed to be most obvious among heavy tea drinkers - drinking a mere one to three cups a day doesn't lower the risk. 

A research team led by Christian Herder from the Leibniz Center for Diabetes Research at Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf, Germany, said previous analyses showed tea consumption was associated with lower incidence of type 2 diabetes.

For more on this see The Daily Mail newspaper online.