Urban Herbals
Urban Herbals...Herbal medicines, potions and lotions. Created by the Urban Herbalist
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Health Benefits of Herbal Teas |
| Posted on Jun 22 2011 |
Drinking Herbal Teas, or herbal infusions as they are otherwise known, can increase your health, improve your fluid intake and perhaps minimise the number of supplements or pills you need to take on a daily basis!
Here is a list of the topics we are going to cover when discussing Herbal Teas.......that way you can scroll down to what interests you the most!
- What are Herbal Teas?
- Herbal Teas are very hydrating.
- Herbal Teas are not dangerous!
- Infuse your Herbal Teas for as long as you can
- Herbal Teas will work better if they are blended together.
- Herbal Teas are caffeine free!
- A pleasant alternative to popping more pills...
- Herbal Teas contain lots of Vitamins, Minerals and Antioxidants
- Fresh Loose leaf herbal teas are MUCH better than teabags!
Herbal Teas, or Herbal Infusions, are made when you pour boiling water over either fresh or dried leaves, flowers, ground roots or seeds.The addition of the hot water softens the plant material allowing water soluble health improving components, such as essential oils, to be released into the water.
Infusions can only get to the active ingredients in tougher material like berries, some roots and bark if they are ground or broken before pouring water onto the herbs. Some seeds are also like this as the outside pod protects the essential oils from air.
Breaking, grinding or crushing them before pouring over boiling water will release these essential oils.
In my Urban Herbals, Urban Mama and Urban Baby ranges, we use many leaves, flowers, roots, berries and seeds in the blends.
To get around the issue of the water not being able to get to the active components, we will freshly grind the seeds before they go into a formulation, or use crushed roots. This means a more potent herbal tea.
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TIP: Herbal Infusions must be covered with a lid to prevent the healing essential oils from evaporating.
Using a proper mug or teapot with with a lid means the oils rise to the top and drop back into the water! |
Do you struggle to get enough fluid into you and find water boring and hard to drink?
Drinking herbal tea is the answer for you...........they are a great way to increase fluid intake while also enjoying the many health benefits they provide.
Herbs contain many nutrients and antioxidants along with their specific health improving components.
In order to get a proper therapeutic dose I recommend drinking at least 3 cups or more a day of our Urban Herbals, or Urban Mama blends.
This means you are already getting 3 cups of health packed water in your day!
Why not have it cold?
We often suggest that people make up their 3 daily cups of the Urban Herbals Blends in one go, then cool it down, pour it into your water bottle and sip throughout the day. Often the lovely flavours are better when cold and it is a great way to get your daily water intake up and drink the dosage of herbal teas needed for the therapeutic dose – especially if you don’t have access to a kettle during the day.
As some of the more dangerous compounds in herbs, such as alkaloids, are not extracted in water, only in alcohol, herbal teas are very safe. You would have to drink a lot of tea in one sitting to cause any problems.
Like anything though everyone is different and always drink the teas within the dosage guidelines, as these wonderful plants do have a certain level of active ingredients.
It is important to give your herbs more time in the hot water than you would a normal tea in order to gain the full medicinal benefits.
Ideally you should leave them to infuse for 10 minutes – sometimes more. This will ensure the maximum active ingredients are extracted.
Some people say their tea gets cold in this time. If you use a mug or teapot with a lid and the water you initially poured over was hot enough – after 10mins the tea should be at the perfect drinking temperature.
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Did you know Peppermint can become bitter if brewed too long? Peppermint is a bit of an exception when talking about the length of time to infuse herbal teas. Interestingly one of the most popular herbal teas is actually what us herbalists call a ‘bitter’. This is a good thing though as it stimulates digestion. You wouldn’t normally associate the lovely fresh minty flavour of peppermint with a bitter flavour, but you will find the longer you infuse you cup of peppermint (a little like green tea) the more the bitter it will become. Luckily a lot of the active components in Peppermint are found in the essential oils and these are easily extracted in water – so it is not essential to infuse it for a long time to get the health benefits. But don’t worry if you accidently wander away and it brews for a while – you will still get that lovely minty flavour, with a slight bitter aftertaste. Just remind yourself that this bitterness is good for you! |
Well most of the time! Obviously a great cup of Peppermint or Chamomile tea is going to be fantastic for you, but blending all these wondering herbs together is even better for you.
And for the Urban Herbalist, this is where the real fun of herbal teas comes in and this is what forms the basis for all Urban Herbals and Urban Mama blends.
We spend a lot of time creating the blends for these ranges,making initial decisions on which herbs should go together to achieve a specific result, and then testing and tasting for flavour to make sure they TASTE GREAT!
There are many reasons why herbs should be blended together and there is a bit of an art and science to blending correctly. Some herbs/ teas taste pretty bad by themselves, such as sage. But if you blend these herbs with other flavourful herb such as licorice, fennel or peppermint for some examples, you can disguise the flavour.
Blending herbs means you get a synergistic effect...
When we blend herbs together we get what us herbalists call a 'Synergistic effect' , so you will get even better results from drinking a blended herbal tea, than perhaps just a single herb.
What does this mean? Let's use the Tum-eeze blend to help explain…
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Tum-eeze contains five herbs – among them Chamomile and Peppermint. BOTH these herbs have an anti-spasmodic action on the digestive tract, essentially they will reduce excessive spasms, that often cause digestive pain and cramping. So you are getting a double dose of this effect by having them both together. But Chamomile also has a well documented anti-inflammatory effect – great for people who have inflammatory conditions like irritable bowel, colitis or chrones disease. And Peppermint is what we call a chologogue – so it stimulates the liver to produce bile which has the effect of improving overall digestion and relieving things like constipation and nausea. So by blending just these two herbs we have now also have combined action of reducing spasms and cramping, reducing inflammation in the digestive tract and improving overall digestion – all in one cup. Then of course we add the other herbs to further improve the formulation and broaden the actions this will have on the overall digestion. |
This is one of the most common question we get and the answer is most of them are!
The exception is a plant called Mate which is a south American herb that contains caffeine and is drunk for its energising properties.
So if you are trying to avoid caffeine then you can rest assured none of our Urban Herbal and Urban Mama Blends.
Also Rooibos or Red Bush is a caffeine free tea – and really is technically a herb.
Supplements and herbal tinctures definitely have their place, especially for their ability to get higher doses into people.
But in our experience many people just don’t want to have to take too many pills and capsules, and therefore are delighted when you can offer them an alternative.
At Urban Herbals we can efficaceous herbals blends that will have a positive impact on the way people feel and their health.
This was our focus when creating the whole Urban Herbals range. Great taste as well as great therapeutic levels.
They can make substantial benefits to your health.
Although not all herbal teas are created equal ....
- They must be fresh, good quality loose leaf herbal teas
- Ideally follow the recommended dose for maximum benefits – in my case 3 cups a day to get the correct therapeutic level.
- They should be blended using herbs where the active ingredients are actually extracted in water
- The blends should be created carefully to ensure a therapeutic dose.
This will ensure you get great benefits from drinking a herbal tea.
HERBAL TEAS CONTAIN VITAMINS, MINERALS AND ANTIOXIDANTS TOO...
It just keeps on getting better! Can you see why The Urban Herbalist loves creating and blending healing therapeutic herbal teas just for you!!
As well as having medicinally active constituents, many herbs contain vitamins and minerals in a balanced and easily absorbable form.
Herbs such as nettle, oats and chickweed are considered very nutritive because of their high vitamin and mineral content, but in fact all herbs contain some nutrients and some of these will end up in your cup and you will benefit from these.
Of course you aren’t going to get as much as you would from a supplement but it means drinking herbal teas is a great addition to our modern, often nutrient deficient diet.
And because they are natural forms of minerals and vitamins they are easily absorbed and assimilated in our bodies.
Normally with are of the opinion that all tea is good tea. There are some great brands of teabags in the UK where the companies use good quality tea and have nice flavours.
But when it comes to Herbal Tea it is a completely different story. We have to say drinking herbal tea from teabags might encourage you to drink more water but they really do little else.
Sorry.....we appreciate they seem less fussy and messy but we have good reasons to say this:-
- The amount of herb in the tea bag is far too low to have any therapeutic effect.
- The leaves have normally been ground to a powder and thus extremely exposed to oxygen, which destroys many of the beneficial effects.
- These cut herbs are also often lower quality and sit around on shelves thus further reducing quality and taste.
The comparison between the flavours of a bitter teabag of Chamomile vs the lovely aroma and taste of freshly dried whole Chamomile flowers is remarkable.
Try it yourself to see the difference!
Last changed: Jun 22 2011 at 11:24 AM
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