Why Too Hot Tea Is Dangerous

Tea that is too hot can cause cancer and many other health problems. You can find out how to best protect yourself here.

40 percent of tea drinkers often drink their hot drink too hot. A British study shows that this impatience can have serious consequences. This is the result, for example, of studies by Iranian scientists. For their study, the researchers at Tehran University compared the data from 300 patients with esophageal cancer with those from healthy people. All subjects drank black tea regularly – on average more than a liter a day.

Too hot tea promotes esophageal cancer

In their evaluation, the scientists paid particular attention to the temperature at which the subjects drank their tea.

The result: subjects who drank their tea at a temperature of 70° Celsius or more were eight times more likely to develop esophageal cancer than those who let it cool down to 65° or less. A drinking temperature of 65° to 69° led to a doubling of the cases of illness.

Another study found that those who wait less than two minutes to drink after infusing the tea have five times the risk of developing esophageal cancer than those who wait four or more minutes.

Doctors suspect that the hot liquid is damaging the surface of the esophagus. A repair process of the cells then begins – this can lead to mutations and thus to cancer.

4 more reasons not to drink tea too hot

• Destroyed taste buds

Taste buds are onion-shaped structures in the lining of the mouth. They contain the sensory cells that we use to perceive tastes. Drinks that are too hot damage taste buds and cause them to die. The result: a restricted sense of taste.

• nosebleeds

Anyone who suffers from frequent nosebleeds should be particularly careful with hot drinks. Because the rising steam causes the blood vessels in the nose to dilate and become more sensitive – this promotes the development of nosebleeds.

• tooth damage

You should not reach for hot tea after a winter walk in the freezing cold: the temperature difference can cause small cracks in the tooth surfaces, which make the teeth sensitive to pain.

• skin irritation

In people with rosacea – a skin condition with an inflammatory rash on the face – drinks that are too hot can exacerbate flare-ups. Some sufferers, therefore, switch to cold drinks entirely.

But properly cooled tea drinking can even prolong life – that shows a study by French researchers.