If a mug of tea or coffee is all you need to get you through the mountain of gift wrapping, cheer yourself up. Researchers found that people who consumed these drinks had a slightly lower risk of head and neck cancer.
According to Cancer Research UK, there are around 12,800 new cases of head and neck cancer in the UK each year and around 4,100 related deaths.
The new study does not prove that tea or coffee itself is effective in preventing such cancers, but experts say the findings have been much debated with inconsistent results. He says it will help clarify the field.
“Although there have been previous studies linking coffee and tea consumption to cancer risk reduction, this study shows that decaffeinated coffee has some positive effects, including the observation that decaffeinated coffee has some positive effects, as well as the effects of decaffeinated coffee on various sub-sites of head and neck cancer. highlighted their different effects on patients,” Dr. Yuan said. – Chin-Amy Lee, Huntsman Cancer Institute and University of Utah School of Medicine, senior author of the study.
Writing in the journal Cancer, the research team describes how they analyzed data from 14 studies across Europe, North America, and Latin America.
Study participants were asked to complete a questionnaire to record their tea and coffee consumption patterns. Nine studies included data on participants’ decaffeinated coffee intake.
Researchers analyzed data from 9,548 people with head and neck cancer and 15,783 people who did not.
After taking into account factors such as age, gender, number of cigarettes smoked daily, alcohol intake, and fruit and vegetable intake, the researchers found that people who drank four or more cups of caffeinated coffee a day were more likely to lose their head. They found they were 17% less likely to develop the disease. Overall neck cancer is reduced compared to non-drinkers. Specifically, they found that such intake was associated with lower odds of cancer of the oral cavity and oropharynx (the area of the throat just behind the mouth).
Drinking decaffeinated coffee was only associated with a lower risk of oral cancer.
The situation with tea was less clear. The results suggest that drinking less than one drink a day reduces the overall risk of head and neck cancer by 9% compared with abstinence, and lower throat cancer in particular.
“Bioactive compounds other than caffeine probably contribute to the potential anticancer effects of coffee and tea,” Lee says.
However, drinking more than one cup a day was found to increase the risk of laryngeal cancer by 38%, and the research team found that drinking tea may increase the likelihood of gastroesophageal reflux disease, which may cause the larynx to suggest that it may be associated with an increased risk of
The researchers noted that the study had limitations, including that self-reported tea and coffee intake may be unreliable and that it did not take into account the type of tea or coffee consumed.
Tom Saunders, emeritus professor of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London, who was not involved in the study, also cited shortcomings.
“In observational studies, it is very difficult to completely exclude confounding effects of tobacco and alcohol, for example, from statistical analyses,” he says.
“As a result, people who drink a lot of coffee and tea are more likely to avoid other harmful behaviors, such as drinking alcohol and smoking, and therefore may have a lower risk of these cancers for other reasons.”
