ABSTRACT
The habitual drinking of tea, coffee, and mate when extremely hot has been shown to cause damage to the upper digestive tract that later may lead to cancer. Although earlier work had showed a positive association between coffee consumption and pancreatic cancer rates across countries, it was the much-publicized case-control study of MacMahon et al. In 1979 two reports by Minton et al., both based on the same groups of women, described impressive improvement in benign breast disease among women who eliminated caffeine and other methylxanthine-containing products from their diet for periods ranging from one to six months. The clinical implications were viewed as potentially important, because benign breast disease is common, in many cases requires biopsy to rule out malignancy, and because certain benign lesions are associated with a twofold or greater risk of breast cancer.
