As per the American Cancer Society, almost 17650 new cases of esophageal cancer will emerge in the year 2019. Almost 16000 people will supposedly die from it.
As far as a person’s outlook is concerned, society has estimated that almost 20 percent of the individuals with esophageal cancer can love for another 5 years after getting a diagnosis.
Multiple factors can increase the risk of a person suffering from the cancer of the esophagus. Some of these factors include being more than 55 years, male sex, acid reflux disease, or consuming a diet rich in processed meats with low amounts of veggies and fruits.
Some researchers have also indicated that drinking extremely hot liquid on a daily basis can increase the total risk of esophageal cancer. However, a lot of these studies asked the participants to remember and check how much tea they should drink and what temperature should it be at.
This approach can provide biased results. When the participants were found to estimate something in retrospect, recall bias can affect the answers. A new study has aimed to rectify this by checking the temperature at which the tea is consumed.
Researchers also wished to study the tea along with its tea drinking habits prospectively instead of retroactively.
Very Hot Tea Increases the Risk Greatly
The researchers used the data of about 50,000 people who were a part of the Golestan Cohort Study. These individuals were about 40 to 75 years old at the baseline of the study.
The researchers have clinically followed the participants for a period of 10.1 years, starting from 2004 till 2017. During this time, 317 people suffered from esophageal cancer.
The researchers categorized the tea temperature into very hot i.e. with a temperature over 60 degrees Celsius, lukewarm i.e. at or below 60 degrees Celsius.
During their analysis, the researchers also took into consideration the reported time from pouring the tea to drinking it. This was between 2 to 6 minutes. They also checked the reported preference for consuming extremely hot tea drinking.
Overall speaking, the study found that consuming 700 millimetres of extremely hot tea every day improve the chances of developing esophageal cancer by 90 percent. This is as compared to the drinking the exact same amount of tea at lukewarm temperature.
The results strengthen the existing evidence that supports a link between hot tea drinking and the risk of esophageal cancer.
The lead researcher along with the colleagues say that it is a public health measure to extrapolate the findings of this study to all types of beverages and to wait for them to cool down to 60 degrees Celsius or below before consuming it.
A lot of people enjoy drinking coffee, tea, or other types of hot beverages. However, according to this study, consuming very hot tea may increase the risk of developing esophageal cancer. So it is advised to wait until the beverages cool down.
The authors have also warned the scientists to do more research in order to learn more about this association.