Recent research has indicated that if you love your chilled glass of iced tea, you are probably better off than those who like their tea scalding hot. Very hot beverages such as tea or coffee have now been linked with cancer which should be another reason to steep rather than boil your tea and to reach for the iced rather than hot cuppa chai.

Hot tea and throat cancer

While cancer of the esophagus has long been linked to alcohol abuse and smoking, there is now something else that has entered the equation, and that is viewed as a cause for throat tumor. Research was conducted in the Golestan province of Iran, which has one of the highest rates of esophageal cancer in the world.

The Golestan Area Tea Drinkers

In this area there is a very low incidence of alcohol use or use or tobacco. However it was found that this province had the cultural habit of drinking large quantities of very hot tea as much as a liter of black tea a day. From around this area some 300 people who had been diagnosed with a throat tumor and a matched group of 571 healthy people who lived in the same area were studied. The study came to the conclusion that very hot fluids could cause damage to the throat’s epithelial lining which in turn may lead to cancer it is thought.

You don’t need to give up your favorite Cuppa just yet!

Don’t go resolving to give up your tea just yet though, it has been seen that most people do not actually have tea at a scalding hot temperature; most people prefer tea that is warm rather than hot; typically tea that is at an average temperature of 56-60 degrees (133 to 140 F).

It is recommended that one should ideally wait about 4 minutes before taking that first sip of a freshly made cup of tea. Then there would be no chance of the kind of damage that would lead to cancer. Because the study clarified that there is no association between the amount of tea drunk and the cancer; only the temperature of the tea and the cancer.  The warmth of tea is not going to cause you any problems, so go enjoy your next cup of tea, as long as you make sure it isn’t too hot!

Tags: cancer, esophagus, Health, hot tea, iced tea, research, tea, throat. warm, tumor