One More Thing That We Can’t Fully Enjoy!

What to blog about this Sunday morning? The only day of the week I can sleep in, but once again, I am awake before 5AM? Why did I wake up so early this Sunday? Is it the sadness I feel about my terminally ill kitty as I know her remaining days are going by too quickly? The excitement I feel about Villanova making it to the “Final Four” last night by nipping the University of Pittsburg in a classic and tremendously exciting basketball game? Or is it the cold, icy fear running through my veins upon learning yesterday morning that I am risking a horribly painful death by living such a risky lifestyle?

I was never a fan of hot drinks, other than of course hot chocolate. I’ve had probably less than 50 cups of coffee in my whole life. My first, second, and third of these were when I was camping on Isle Royale in Lake Superior and “slept”, tentless, in a violent thunderstorm. I stayed up all night, soaked and shivering, and when other campers offered me hot coffee in the morning, I was only too glad to drink it. I never liked the thought of tea. My mom drank it all the time, but put so much milk in it that it just always looked awful to me.

But maybe 10 years ago, I discovered that I really like hot tea, not with milk, not with sugar, but with honey. On the rare occasions that I eat breakfast out, the waitress is guaranteed a more generous tip if she can find honey for my tea. Plus, they are always talking about how good tea is for you, all of the wonderful antioxidants and other organic compounds. When I was on chemotherapy in 2002, I could not stomach tea or many other things that I normally loved, and really missed drinking tea for all those months. And not starting the day off with a mug of hot tea is something that I really miss on Team in Training Saturdays, but when you are running in a city for miles with no bathrooms, I don’t need a bunch of liquid caffeine coursing through my veins sending “Evacuate! Evacuate!” messages to my bladder. Even though it doesn’t seem to bother many men to pee on a public street corner, that was just not how I was raised. So, no tea on Saturdays!

So imagine my chagrin yesterday morning to read in the paper that hot tea causes cancer! What the hell? You have to be kidding me! And not just any cancer, but esophageal cancer, which has to be a particularly awful, painful one since you are going to starve to death at the end. Is there anything in life that doesn’t try to kill you? I know that it is a dangerous world, but hot tea???? Come on!

It turns out that it is the temperature of the tea and not the tea itself that matters as far as esophageal cancer is concerned. If you drink the tea at under 140 degrees (F), then you are probably going to be OK. So while I like my tea really hot, I also like to let it steep for at least 5 minutes, which maybe cools it down a bit. It never occurred to me to stick a thermometer in my tea. But maybe I should start doing that.

It is a pretty sad state of affairs when even a nice cup of hot tea is a deadly danger. Cross one more thing off the list that is supposed to be good for you while moving it to the “danger” list. The next thing you know, they will find that honey causes MS or something like that. It’s a dangerous world out there. But I guess if something is going to kill you, it might as well be a mug of hot tea.