Esophogeal Cancer and Hot Tea?

Here's a new one: eating hot foods and drinking hot beverages, including tea, increases your risk for esophogeal cancer. Apparently letting your tea sit for a while so it cools down negates this increased risk.

In the case-control study, risk for esophageal cancer was increased for drinking hot tea or very hot tea vs lukewarm or warm tea. Risk was also significantly increased for drinking tea 2 to 3 minutes after pouring or less than 2 minutes after pouring vs drinking tea at least 4 minutes after being poured. Responses to the questions about temperature at which tea was drunk agreed strongly with interval from tea being poured to being drunk.

"Drinking hot tea, a habit common in Golestan province, was strongly associated with a higher risk of oesophageal cancer," the study authors write.

http://cme.medscape.com/viewarticle/590589

Basically, the article says the type of cancer linked to hot beverage consumption is the same type typically caused by smoking or excessive alcohol consumption. Smoking and too much alcohol damage the cells lining the esophagus, so if your tea is too hot, it'll do the same thing and possibly cause the same kind of cancer.



Other resources:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15151616
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17273005