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Jury's out on whether the DNA modification by tea is good or bad, but either way, men showed no epigenetic effects from tea habit
What is sure is that tea consumption changes the expression of genes associated with cancer and estrogen metabolism – in women.
One method of genetic regulation we have discovered is epigenetic modification: Some genes are regulated (turned on and off) by adding or removing methyl groups to the DNA.
The new research encompassed just over 3,000 Europeans and involved meta-analyses of the results. Ek also notes that more women were studied than men, making it harder to find significant associations for the male component.
The researchers did not narrow their study to a specific type of tea, or even quantities of tea that would have epigenetic effect on women.
Both coffee and tea have been found to affect the risk of disease, for instance by suppressing tumor progression and decreasing inflammation, and also through influencing the estrogen metabolism. (More precisely: coffee consumption has been associated with lower risk of oral, pharynx, liver, colon, prostate, endometrial cancer and melanoma – but increased lung cancer risk.)