Let hot drinks cool down a bit before drinking; avoid tea, soup, and coffee that are piping hot
Drinking tea that is very hot raises your risk of esophageal cancer by 8 times compared to drinking lukewarm tea. Even tea that is just “hot” doubles the risk. If you drink tea less than two minutes after pouring it, your risk is 5 times higher than if you wait at least four minutes to drink it.
No money is required;
In a high-risk region for esophageal cancer in northern Iran, researchers compared 300 patients with esophagea…
No money is required; you just need to wait two to three extra minutes each time. The hard part is resisting the urge to drink when you’re craving a hot beverage.
In a high-risk region for esophageal cancer in northern Iran, researchers compared 300 patients with esophageal cancer to 571 healthy individuals. All results below are compared against people who drank lukewarm tea. Those who drank “hot” tea had roughly 2.07 times the risk of developing squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus (95% CI: 1.28–3.35). For people who drank “very hot” tea, the risk was about 8.16 times higher (95% CI: 3.93–16.9). Those who drank tea less than two minutes after pouring it had 5.41 times the risk of developing the disease compared to people who waited at least four minutes to drink it (95% CI: 2.63–11.1).
Islami F, Pourshams A, Nasrollahzadeh D, et al. (2009). Tea drinking habits and oesophageal cancer in a high risk area in northern Iran: population based case-control study. BMJ, 338, b929. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.b929；Loomis D, Guyton KZ, Grosse Y, et al. (2016). Carcinogenicity of drinking coffee, mate, and very hot beverages. Lancet Oncology, 17(7), 877-878. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1470-2045(16)30239-X
Open source linkThe International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies hot drinks above 65°C as Group 2A carcinogens, meaning they are “probably carcinogenic to humans.” The same assessment also confirms that coffee itself is not carcinogenic. In China, high rates of esophageal cancer in regions like Chaoshan and the Taihang Mountains are strongly linked to the habit of drinking beverages while they are still very hot.