Can't start a day without drinking coffee or tea? Here's some good news: your morning ritual not only fuels you for the busy day ahead but may also protect you from head and neck cancers.

Head and neck cancer refers to cancers that develop in areas such as the mouth, throat, nose, and larynx. Although survival rates have improved over the years, the number of people diagnosed with these cancers is rising, especially oropharyngeal cancer, increasing the overall burden in lower-income countries. This highlights the urgent need for prevention.

Recent research that reviewed 14 studies by different scientists associated with the International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology Consortium revealed a reduced cancer risk among daily coffee and tea drinkers, including head and neck cancers, cancers of the oral cavity, and oropharyngeal cancers.

People who drank more than 4 cups of coffee had a 17% reduced risk of head and neck cancers, a 30% reduced risk of oral cavity cancer, and a 22% lower risk of oropharyngeal cancer. Drinking 3–4 cups daily reduced the risk of hypopharyngeal cancer by 41%.

"Dose-response relationships were observed between drinking >4 cups of caffeinated coffee daily and decreased risks of HNC and all its subsites," the researchers wrote in the study published in Cancer, a journal from the American Cancer Society.

Even decaffeinated coffee drinkers saw benefits, with those consuming up to 1 cup daily reducing their risk of oral cavity cancer by 25%.

Among daily tea drinkers, consuming up to 1 cup was linked to a 9% reduced risk of head and neck cancers and a 27% reduced risk of hypopharyngeal cancer. However, drinking more than 1 cup was associated with a 38% higher risk of laryngeal cancer.

"While there has been prior research on coffee and tea consumption and reduced risk of cancer, this study highlighted their varying effects with different sub-sites of head and neck cancer, including the observation that even decaffeinated coffee had some positive impact," said senior author Dr. Yuan-Chin Amy Lee in a news release.

"Coffee and tea habits are fairly complex, and these findings support the need for more data and further studies around the impact that coffee and tea can have on reducing cancer risk," Dr Amy Lee added.