Can Tea boost you chances of Pregnancy?

Tea May Boost Chances of Pregnancy
28 Mar 2012
By World Tea News
BOSTON, Mass.

Researchers at Boston University studying women who were trying to conceive found that tea drinkers were 27 percent more likely to become pregnant.

The year-long study of 3,600 Danish women found that drinking two cups of tea a day boost the chance of pregnancy compared to a control group. It is the largest study of caffeine on pregnancy.

The study also revealed women who drank two cola-style carbonated beverages daily were 20 percent less likely to become pregnant.

The findings suggest that switching from cola to tea could significantly enhance the chances of pregnancy.

Professor Elizabeth Hatch said the discovery is secondary to the purpose of the study which was designed to determine whether caffeine intake affected the chances of pregnancy.

Findings from the study revealed drinking coffee doesn’t affect your chance of getting pregnant.

She cautioned that previous studies strongly suggest that women who are trying to get pregnant and those expecting a child should avoid caffeine. The results of previous research were not conclusive.

In this study Hatch and her colleagues monitored each volunteer for a year. Danish women of average 28 years of age were chosen for the research because every Danish citizen is given a civil registration number at birth, allowing health officials to recruit and then screen individuals through the internet.

“We don’t know how they took the tea or if they added milk or lemon, but they had this increased chance of getting pregnant over women who did not drink tea at all,” Professor Hatch reported. “It may be linked to caffeine but clearly there may be other factors linked with the women’s lifestyle or there may be beneficial properties in tea itself,” she said.

The researcher cautioned though that although tea increased chances of having a baby, it was not a miracle cure that guaranteed pregnancy.

“I think drinking two or three cups of tea a day for anyone wishing to get pregnant will be fine. I would love to say tea is a miracle cure to get pregnant but that is not realistic. There may be other factors. The tea drinkers tended to be older women and there may be something else in their diet or lifestyle that helped.”

Tea contains a lot of antioxidants “which are very good for male and female fertility,” according to Maha Ragunath, consultant in reproductive medicine at the Care Fertility Centre in Nottingham, U.K. “But I don't think women trying for a baby should now drink lots of tea, it's everything in moderation."

According to reports on the Growing Your Baby website, “researchers found that green tea, which is believed to boost pregnancy chances, did not have any additional affects and increased conception chances in the same way as any other tea.”

The team is now trying to find further links between tea consumption and pregnancy and if it affects baby’s health, birth size, pregnancy complications and chances of miscarriage.

Source: Growing Your Baby, Deccan Chronicle