HERBAL TEA AND ITS HEALTHY BENEFITS

The herbal tea is a warm company, but also a perfect break to hydrate enough and support the body. Let’s find out together what herbal tea is and its benefits.

What is herbal tea?

Often obtained from one or more herbal drugs (herbs, spices, fruits, or other plant components), herbal tea is intended for oral aqueous consumption for therapeutic purposes. More simply, herbal tea is a preparation that exploits the solvent effect of hot or cold water to extract medicinal substances from plant sources.

The three basic techniques for the home preparation of herbal tea are infusion, decoction, and maceration. The choice of the most suitable extraction method depends on the characteristics of the plant sources and the active ingredients that you want to extract from time to time.

Herbal tea is prepared using drinking water and, before using, if necessary, is filtered. Herbal tea can be composed of a single-component or prepared with a homogeneous set of drugs with similar properties.

What is herbal tea good for?

The beneficial effects of herbal teas have been known since ancient times. Mallow, chamomile, mint: herbal tea is a real natural cure-all for health and an excellent habit for our well-being. Why not spend the afternoon or the evening with a healthy herbal tea?

The fundamental role of herbal tea is to promote the functions of the body to optimize its normal performance. Based on the natural drugs used, herbal teas help to lose weight, purify and detoxify the body. They have a draining effect, they can be laxative, diuretic, relaxing, energetic, and anti-inflammatory. 

The herbs and flowers, taken through the herbal teas, are useful in the treatment of various illnesses such as fatigue and bad digestion, and in general, all those illnesses that cannot be considered true diseases. It should be pointed out that herbal teas should always be regarded as an adjunct, perhaps to calm the symptoms, and should therefore not exclude any need for the use of synthetic medicinal products.

The body parts treated with herbal tea are divided into four main categories:

• mind, head, and face (marjoram herbal tea)
• body, skin, and chest (elder herbal tea)
• lower abdomen and abdomen (yarrow herbal tea)
• bones, lower limbs, and circulation (horse-chestnut herbal tea).

 How to drink herbal tea to benefit from it?

Unlike other drinks, the herbal tea should be drunk possibly hot or at room temperature (not cold), so it should not be prepared so long before consumption and should not be heated. It is better to consume the herbal tea without added sugar or sweeten it with honey, which goes well with all herbal preparations.

Depending on their purpose, herbal teas should be taken at different times of the day. In the morning on an empty stomach those depurative, laxative, diuretic; in mid-morning and mid-afternoon those antiseptic, anti-rheumatic, cardiotonic; after the meals those digestive and sedative; in the evening, before sleeping, those sedative, laxative and beneficial for circulation.

Can I drink herbal tea while intermitting fasting?

The answer is yes. It is necessary to distinguish the moment of fasting from the one in which it is allowed to eat: in the first, any food that contributes calories would make the effort vain, but it is possible to take drinks without sugar such as herbal teas.

Herbal teas are also present in the ProLon® meal program. During the Fasting Mimicking Diet journey, every day you will drink 4 herbal teas: hibiscus, spearmint, spearmint, and lemon herbal tea.

Do you want more nutritional information about the Fasting Mimicking Diet? Get in touch with our knowledgeable nutritionists.