Among Chinese adults who drank at least one beer, cocktail or glass
of wine daily, those who also consumed burning hot tea every day
were 5 times more likely to develop esophageal cancer than people
who drank tea at any temperature less than once a week, the study
found.
For current smokers, drinking scalding hot tea every day was
associated with roughly twice the risk of esophageal cancer as
consuming tea less than weekly.
“Keeping away from both tobacco and excessive alcohol use is the
most important means for esophageal cancer prevention,” said study
coauthor Dr. Jun Lv of Peking University Health Science Center in
China.
“Under this increased risk of esophageal cancer from smoking and
drinking alcohol, if people like drinking very hot tea, the risk of
developing cancer will be synergistically higher,” Lv said by email.

But by itself, drinking hot tea doesn’t increase cancer risk, Lv
said.
China is among the countries with the highest incidence of
esophageal cancer, researchers note in the Annals of Internal
Medicine. Because tea drinkers in China, especially men, are more
likely to drink alcohol and smoke, previous studies haven’t offered
a clear picture or whether burning hot tea might be an independent
risk factor for esophageal tumors.
While some prior research has suggested tea may help protect against
tumors in the digestive tract, other studies have shown repeated
consumption of very hot food or drink might damage the esophagus and
help tumors take hold, the researchers note.
For the current study, researchers examined data on 456,155 adults
ages 30 to 79 who completed questionnaires about their smoking,
alcohol and tea habits.
At the start of the study, none of the participants had cancer.
Researchers followed half of the participants for at least 9 years.
During the study, 1,731 people developed esophageal tumors.
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People who drank scalding hot tea, consumed excessive amounts of
alcohol and also smoked had more than five times the risk of
esophageal cancer than individuals who didn’t do any of these
things.
The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether
or how the temperature of tea might impact the risk of esophageal
tumors.
Another limitation is that study participants reported on their own
smoking and drinking habits, and their reports could be unreliable.
Researchers also only had data on tea consumption from one point in
time, when people joined the study, making it impossible to know how
changing habits might have impacted the cancer risk.
“People probably do not estimate their tea temperature perfectly,
and this is one of the main limitations of the study,” said Neal
Freedman, author of an accompanying editorial and a researcher with
the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National
Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.
“Drinking tea at a lower temperature should not be considered as a
replacement for smoking cessation and limiting alcohol intake,”
Freedman said by email. “Nevertheless, accumulating data suggest
that drinking very hot tea may also increase the risk of esophageal
cancer, and it may be prudent for people who drink very hot
beverages to wait until it cools down a bit before drinking, whether
or not they also smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2wYH0qu Annals of Internal Medicine, online
February 5, 2018.
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