May 20, 2015 04:46 PM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

New research suggests that drinking chamomile tea could help Mexican-American women live longer, The Toronto Sun reported.

Researchers at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston found that drinking chamomile tea reduced the risk of death from all causes in Mexican-American American women aged 65 years and older by 29 percent.

"We were not surprised to find an association between chamomile and decreased mortality," lead study author Bret Howrey, a researcher at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, told Reuters Health.

Chamomile is one of the oldest, most-widely used and well-documented medicinal plants in the world and has been recommended for a variety of healing applications. It is currently widely used as an herbal remedy in Mexico and among Mexican-Americans

"The reason for a difference in our reported findings between Hispanic women and men is not clear, although women were shown to be more frequent users of chamomile than men," researcher Bret Howrey said in a statement. "This difference may be due to traditional gender roles whereby women manage the day-to-day activities of the household, including family health, and may also reflect greater reliance on folk remedies such as herbs."

For the study, researchers collected and analyzed data from more than 1,600 women and men from the Hispanic Established Populations for Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly, a population-based study of Mexican-Americans aged 65 and older from five Southwestern states, including Texas. Fourteen percent of the people in the study drank chamomile tea.

Researchers said it is unclear how chamomile use is associated with decreased mortality.

The findings are detailed in the journal The Gerontologist. 

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