Fans of green tea, black tea, or oolong tea can now rejoice and enjoy their cuppa tea more.  Besides the various health benefits that one can reap from drinking this aromatic beverage, a new study conducted by the National University of Singapore (NUS) along with the University of Essex and University of Cambridge, UK, showed that regular tea drinkers have better organised brain regions compared to non-tea drinkers.

Better organised brain regions are associated with healthy cognitive function, which protects against age-related decline.

“Our results offer the first evidence of positive contribution of tea drinking to brain structure, and suggest that drinking tea regularly has a protective effect against age-related decline in brain organisation” said Feng Lei, team leader and assistant professor in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

A previous study by Feng Lei also showed that daily tea drinking appears to reduce the risk of cognitive decline in older adults by 50%.

Some studies have identified certain associations between tea drinking and mental health. For instance, one study found that depressive symptoms were less common in older adults who drank tea consistently and frequently.

In addition to brain health, tea consumption, especially of green tea, has been linked to a lower risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes, according to Harvard Medical School.