Drinking two or more cups of tea a day appears to cut a woman's risk of contracting ovarian cancer by almost half according to one of the biggest studies yet conducted into the restorative's cancer-fighting properties. Even women who drank less than one cup of green or black tea per day have a risk of ovarian cancer 18 per cent lower than those who do not drink tea. The risk is 24 per cent lower for women who drink one cup per day I and 46 per cent lower for two cups or more. Each additional cup of tea is believed to further lower the risk of ovarian cancer I according to the authors of the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

There has been some experimental evidence that green and black tea might lower the risk of some cancers, but this is one of the few studies that have looked at the ability of tea to reduce the risk of cancer, the researchers noted.

In their study, Susanna C. Larsson and Alicja Wolk, of the National Institute of Environmental Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm looked at 61,057 women who were 40 to 76 years old. The women all participate in a population-based study called the Swedish Mammography Cohort. At the beginning of the study 68 percent of the participants said they drank tea (mainly black tea) at least once a month. During 15 years of follow-up, 301 women were diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

"We found a lower risk of ovarian cancer associated with greater tea consumption," Larsson said. Both black and green tea contains polyphenois -substances thought to block cell damage that can lead to cancer.

This research adds to the mounting evidence of the health benefits of tea but it's not clear whether it's the tea
itself or other factors that result in the lower disease risks of frequent tea drinkers. Nonetheless, drinking tea for
refreshment is enjoyable and may be doing you good.