Is there any correlation between fertility and tea drinking? In Cosmopolitan magazine's February issue, it states that your chances of conception double if you consume a half-cup or more of tea a day. The article cited the American Journal of Public Health as its source. Is this possible? How would this work?

L.

This article was published in the February 1998 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The authors examined 210 women who reported on their caffeinated beverage consumption and pregnancy status monthly. Conception rates were calculated for high, moderate and low consumption. No significant association was found for any of the caffeinated beverages except tea. Drinking one-half cup or more of tea daily approximately doubled the odds of conception per cycle. As coffee drinkers did not see a benefit, it is not likely that caffeine is the agent responsible for any variation in fertility associated with consumption of the beverages examined.

Interpretations of studies such as this are complicated by study design. Did all the tea drinkers drink the same type of tea? Did they drink Pekoe, Earl Grey, or green tea? Were there any other differences between tea drinkers and coffee drinkers or low consumers that would explain the differences in pregnancy? Were the groups of equal age? Were past pregnancy histories similar among the groups? Until a study is done in a fashion that controls for all these factors, I don't have enough information to advise women to take up tea in order to conceive.