Coffee, tea, etc. drinkers - not too hot, please

[Darrell KSR]

World Health Organization reversed a 25-year old position and said coffee is probably not carcinogenic, but that drinking coffee, tea, etc. at temperatures greater than 149 degrees can lead to esophogeal cancer.

More good news for the coffee drinkers - studies also show it reduces incidence of liver cancer by 15%. I'm counting on it staving off my cognitive decline as well. I just probably started too late!

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/mb/news/nation-now/who-drinking-extremely-hot-coffee-tea-probably-causes-cancer/245080773

[PedroDaGr8]

This is a pretty interesting study. This is hotter than MOST in the west drink their coffee, though not hotter than coffee is served. The issue is that the temperature is so high that it appears to cause repeated burns to the esophageal lining. Basically, every time you drink you are burning your throat when you do so, if you drink coffee at this temperature. The repeated burns cause great stress on the cells in the lining, which eventually results in the formation of cancer. I didn't read if the heat causes mutations in the cells or makes the cells worse at repairing the random mutations that occur regularly.

[badrose]

5608

Drink it chilled.

[dan_bgblue]

My tea has plenty of ice cubes in it. I make it relatively strong, but I will not drink it hot

[KSRBEvans]

Allow me to say as a preliminary matter: if drinking coffee is wrong, then I don't want to be right. If someone said it reduces my life expectancy by 5 years, I'd probably take that deal.

Having said that, I'm not sure what we're supposed to believe anymore. For example, for years we were told that salt was bad for you. Now studies show it's not a big deal (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/06/more-scientists-doubt-salt-is-as-bad-for-you-as-the-government-says/). I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing over here.

[CitizenBBN]

There has always been serious doubt about the issue of salt. There never was a true consensus, just the AHA claiming there was, and the evidence was more correlation than causation. The conclusion went that too many Americans have high blood pressure, and salt CAN elevate blood pressure so reducing salt can thus reduce high blood pressure.

The problem is that first it is very different for different people. Second, lowering salt often only lowers it slightly, not enough to be significant. But mostly, there really isnt any great data on what "high sodium" is versus "low sodium", and in fact too low a sodium intake and you can do harm.

What government hates to admit is "we don't know".

There's also a TON of politics in this. I was extremely fortunate to have an economics class taught by Murray Wiedenbaum, THE Murray Weidenbaum who was Reagan's Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors and a major architect of Reaganomics. he laid out how several of these things happened in Washington, often not due to science but politics and agendas and money.

Stick to moderation and exercise and hope you have good genes.

[Darrell KSR]

Stick to moderation and exercise and hope you have good genes.

Good advice.

[suncat05]

5608

Drink it chilled.

Somebody just has to "poke the bear", don't they? LOL!

[badrose]

Somebody just has to "poke the bear", don't they? LOL!

I'm fairly addicted to it. It fills me up, tastes great, and I have no appetite until around 5PM or so. In the meantime I drink a lot of water and nibble on a protein bar. I'm on my feet most of the day.