It was the Wu-Tang Clan who once cautioned that “you best protect ya neck.” And it only took us a little over 30 years to figure out what they were referring to—though C.R.E.A.M. should have been a dead giveaway—that drinking coffee can protect you against head and neck cancer (HNC).
Published in the journal Cancer, the study was undertaken by an international team of researchers who examined “A pooled analysis of 9,548 HNC cases and 15,783 controls from 14 individual-level case-control studies… conducted from the International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology consortium.” Members from both the HNC and non-HNC group were asked about their daily coffee and tea consumption habits, including whether they the drinks were caffeinated of decaffeinated.
After factoring in things like age, diet, alcohol consumption and smoking, researchers found that those who regular drank more than four cups of caffeinated coffee a day were associated with a 17% decrease in developing any kind of head and neck cancer when compared to non-coffee drinkers. The protective benefit was most noticeable in cancers related to the oral cavity and the oropharynx, the part of the throat just behind the mouth. Decaf coffee meanwhile didn’t have the same overall benefit but still show signs of protecting against oral cancer specifically.
Their findings on tea were more mixed. One cup of tea a day was associated with a 9% decrease in instances of HNC, but more than one cup was associated with a 38% increase in laryngeal cancer.
Per the Times of India, HNC is one of the more common forms of cancer globally, and in the UK alone accounts for over 12,000 new cases annually as well as over 4,000 deaths. So any preventative measures one can take would be a boon for their health, especially if they are something as ubiquitous as drinking coffee. Still, the study is only observational, and more research is required to establish causation, including looking into how different types of coffee and tea affect outcomes (the current study only differentiated between caffeinated and decaf). But it’s another study to add to the pile of mounting evidence that coffee is about the healthiest thing you can put in your body.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
