Nasreen Qazi, Shahnawaz Jamali, Gunesh Kumar, Madiha Shah, Jamil Leghari, Huma Shah.
Pattern and impact of tea consumption in urban population of Hyderabad.
Isra Med J Jan ;6(2):58-60.

OBJECTIVE: To find out frequency of tea use with possible health effects in urban population of Hyderabad Sindh. PLACE & DURATION: At Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences Jamshoro from 1st March 2010 to 30th April 2010. STUDY DESIGN: A cross sectional study. METHODOLOGY: The study was performed on 1432 healthy individuals. The baseline demographic characteristics were recorded on a specially designed proforma. The socioeconomic status was divided in five categories according to monthly earnings. Consumption of tea was estimated by the number of cups/day and type of tea consumed. Sugar added to tea was calculated by the number of teaspoons. Waist to hip ratio was also calculated. Persons with history of chronic diseases were excluded from the study. RESULTS: 1102 males and 330 females participated in the study (n=1432), the mean age for men was 38+1.54 years and for women it was 30+1.25years. Among the 1102 males, 22.68% consumed 5-6 cups/day, 58.98% 3-4 cups/day and 18.33% only 2 cups/day, while females when inquired only 22% were consuming 2 cups/day with 48.48% 3-4cup/day and 31.5% were having 5-6 cups/day. Tea was prepared mostly by adding milk. 805 (73.04%) males & 250 (75.7%) females were having such tea, while only 3.62% of males 3.03% females were using black tea. The habit of having green tea was seen in 257 (23.32%) males, while none of the females in the present research was using green tea. Socioeconomically most of the participants belonged to lower socio economic group (Table – I) earning 3000-9000 rupees / month (36.47% males and 39.3% females): Waist to hip ratio was positively correlated with the amount of sugar and frequency of tea intake. CONCLUSION: Tea can be hazardous for health if the pattern continues to be same, so habit of green tea ingestion should be encouraged as tea mixed with milk and sugar further adds to the burden of future diabetics.

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