Interactions of black tea polyphenols with human gut microbiota: implications for gut and cardiovascular health

I couldn't see any references to cardiovascular health but then this is just the abstract. You'll have to ask your doctor  how many cups of black tea you should be drinking immediately post-stroke.
And since I was only mobile in a wheelchair you would need to make sure your wheelchair has cup holders for transporting it back to your room from the cafeteria.
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/98/6/1631S.abstract?sid=3a949d69-2700-4665-a8fe-c4f1bb2c9554

1. John van Duynhoven,
2. Elaine E Vaughan,
3. Ferdi van Dorsten,
4. Victoria Gomez-Roldan,
5. Ric de Vos,
6. Jacques Vervoort,
7. Justin JJ van der Hooft,
8. Laure Roger,
9. Richard Draijer, and
10. Doris M Jacobs

+ Author Affiliations

1. ¹From Unilever Discover Vlaardingen, Vlaardingen, Netherlands (JvD, EEV, FvD, LR, RD, and DMJ); the Laboratory of Biophysics and Wageningen NMR Centre (JvD and JV), and the Laboratory of Biochemistry (JV and JJJvdH), Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands; Plant Research International, Wageningen, Netherlands (VG-R, RdV, and JJJvdH); the Netherlands Metabolomics Centre, Leiden, Netherlands (JvD, FvD, RdV, JV, JJJvdH, and DMJ); and the Centre for Biosystems Genomics, Wageningen, Netherlands (RdV and VG-R).

+ Author Notes

• ↵2 Presented at the conference “Fifth International Scientific Symposium on Tea and Human Health,” held at the US Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC, 19 September 2012. The conference was organized by Jeffrey Blumberg, Tufts University, Boston, MA, and a Steering Committee including representatives from each of the symposium cosponsors: the American Cancer Society, the American College of Nutrition, the American Institute for Cancer Research, the American Medical Women's Association, the American Society for Nutrition, and the Linus Pauling Institute. The symposium was underwritten by the Tea Council of the USA. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Tea Council of the USA or the cosponsoring organizations.
• ↵3 This work was jointly financed by Unilever and the Netherlands Metabolomics Centre (NMC), which is part of the Netherlands Genomics Initiative/Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. JvD received travel support from the Tea Council of the USA for speaking at the Fifth International Scientific Symposium on Tea and Human Health.
• ↵4 Address correspondence to J van Duynhoven, Unilever Discover Vlaardingen, Olivier van Noortlaan 120, 3133AT, Vlaardingen, Netherlands. E-mail: john-van.duynhoven@unilever.com.

Abstract

Epidemiologic studies have convincingly associated consumption of black tea with reduced cardiovascular risk. Research on the bioactive molecules has traditionally been focused on polyphenols, such as catechins. Black tea polyphenols (BTPs), however, mainly consist of high-molecular-weight species that predominantly persist in the colon. There, they can undergo a wide range of bioconversions by the resident colonic microbiota but can in turn also modulate gut microbial diversity. The impact of BTPs on colon microbial composition can now be assessed by microbiomics technologies. Novel metabolomics platforms coupled to de novo identification are currently available to cover the large diversity of BTP bioconversions by the gut microbiota. Nutrikinetic modeling has been proven to be critical for defining nutritional phenotypes related to gut microbial bioconversion capacity. The bioactivity of circulating metabolites has been studied only to a certain extent. Bioassays dedicated to specific aspects of gut and cardiovascular health have been used, although often at physiologically irrelevant concentrations and with limited coverage of relevant metabolite classes and their conjugated forms. Evidence for cardiovascular benefits of BTPs points toward antiinflammatory and blood pressure–lowering properties and improvement in platelet and endothelial function for specific microbial bioconversion products. Clearly, more work is needed to fill in existing knowledge gaps and to assess the in vitro and in vivo bioactivity of known and newly identified BTP metabolites. It is also of interest to assess how phenotypic variation in gut microbial BTP bioconversion capacity relates to gut and cardiovascular health predisposition.