Drinking very hot tea can not only make you burn. It may also be related to a higher risk of esophageal cancer , especially if it is also done by individuals who consume alcohol and smoke cigarettes. That follows from a study carried out by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Research and Development Program based on long-term follow-up of more than 450,000 participants. The study has been published in the Annals of Internal Medicine .
China is one of the countries in the world with the highest incidence of esophageal cancer , a disease whose prevalence is increasing and whose survival rate is quite low , especially in men living in underdeveloped areas. It is also the case that China is one of the countries where the most tea is drunk . Chinese men are heavy users, as well as being very prone to smoking and drinking alcohol. Smoking and alcohol intake, as well as the chemical compounds and negative thermal effects of hot tea, significantly increase the consequences of the association between tea consumption and cancer risk.
To conduct the study, researchers from the China National Natural Sciences Foundation and the National Research and Development Program interviewed participants enrolled in the China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB) study. They excluded those who had previously been diagnosed with cancer or who had reduced their consumption of tea, alcohol or tobacco to try to find out if drinking that infusion at high temperatures could be associated with a higher risk of esophageal cancer.
The research took into account data from 456,155 people between the ages of 30 and 79 during a mean follow-up period of 9.2 years . The study authors found that there was a connection between drinking hot tea and drinking excess alcohol and heavy smoking with the risk of esophageal cancer. Those individuals who consumed hot tea, drank excessively and smoked had a risk of esophageal cancer more than five times higher than those who did not have any of these three habits.
On the other hand, moderation in daily alcohol intake, smoking, and tea drinking were not associated with esophageal cancer risk.
According to the study authors, these findings suggest that abstaining from excessively hot tea may be beneficial for people who binge drink or smoke.
