A cup of tea may do more than warm you up. A study published in the journal Nutrients in November found that, among older women, tea consumption was linked with higher bone mineral density—a measure of the calcium and minerals in bone used to assess osteoporosis risk. Coffee, on the other hand, didn’t appear to have a positive effect on bone health.
So, should you start drinking more tea to strengthen your bones? Not necessarily, said Marilyn Tan, MD, FACE, FACP, a double board-certified endocrinologist and internal medicine physician at Stanford Medicine. But you “should feel reassured that consuming tea is unlikely to negatively affect bone density,” she said.
Osteoporosis is a major public health concern, affecting roughly one in three women and one in five men over 50 worldwide. The disease weakens bones, increasing the risk of fractures, and can lead to a significant decrease in quality of life and increase in disability and death.
Older women are particularly at risk because bone loss accelerates after menopause.
To investigate whether popular and antioxidant-rich beverages like tea and coffee might help protect against bone loss, researchers from Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, tracked nearly 10,000 women ages 65 and older over for 10 years. They looked at tea and coffee consumption and measured bone mineral density at the hip and femoral neck—areas where low BMD is strongly linked to a higher risk of fractures.
After a decade, the team found that tea drinkers had higher hip BMD compared with non-tea drinkers. The more tea participants drank, the higher their associated hip BMD. Moderate coffee consumption—about two to three cups a day—didn’t appear to affect bone health, while drinking five or more cups was actually associated with lower BMD.
That finding supports previous research linking heavy coffee consumption with lower bone density and an increased fracture risk.
Some compounds in tea could help explain its potential role in supporting bone health. Certain teas are rich in antioxidants, which some evidence suggests may help prevent bone loss, said Theodore Strange, MD, chair of medicine at Northwell Health’s Staten Island University Hospital and a geriatric physician.
Tea also contains catechins—substances that have been shown to prevent some types of cancer and may have bone-protective properties. “Catechins may promote osteoblast activity and inhibit osteoclast differentiation,” the process that breaks down bone tissue, Tan said.
Still, experts caution that it’s too early to start drinking tea specifically to prevent osteoporosis. While the research found associations, it can’t prove causation.
The study also had important limitations: It didn’t track the specific types of beverages participants drank, relied on self-reported data, and included mostly white older women in the United States, meaning the results may not be broadly applicable, Strange noted. “More controlled studies to help minimize variable biases need to be done,” he told Health.
For now, to protect your bones, it’s a good idea to focus on proven strategies: exercise regularly, eat a balanced diet rich in calcium and vitamin D, and limit alcohol and smoking, according to the Bone Health & Osteoporosis Foundation.
