Background: Tea consumption has been reported to be associated with lowered risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke and osteoporosis that cause functional disability, but its association with physical function has not been investigated directly.
Objective: We examined the association between tea consumption and performance in gait and balance, instrumental and basic activities of daily living (IADL and BADL) in a cross-sectional study of community-living older persons.
Method: Baseline data of 2398 adults aged ≥ 55 years in the Singapore Longitudinal Ageing Studies who completed self-reported current tea consumption, Performance Oriented Mobility Assessment (POMA) of gait and balance, and self reports of BADL and IADL were analyzed.
Results: In multivariate analyses controlling for age, gender, education, housing type, co-morbidities, hospitalization, arthritis and hip fracture, GDS depression score, MMSE cognitive score, body mass index, creatinine, serum albumin, haemoglobin, physical activities score and coffee consumption, tea consumption was positively associated with better balance (β=0.06, p<0.01), gait (β=0.01, p=0.02), IADL (β=0.03, p=0.01) and BADL (β=0.01, p=0.05). Strongly positive associations were observed for black/oolong tea in multivariate analyses, and for green tea consumption only in univariate analysis, whereas coffee consumption was not associated at all.
Conclusions: Tea consumption was associated with better physical functional performances in community-living older adults.