"healing teas"

From: Amazon

TEA TIME!!

Tea I'm now sipping: Chamomile Citrus form Mighty Leaf. What **tea** would you like to be served?

A few months ago when I was doing my first internship, I stopped by Teavana on my way back from work to sip some of their free samples of tea. Although I was initially only there to get my dosage of free stuff (just because, as a college student, it's hard-wired in me to seek every opportunity to consume free products no matter how trifle!), I was too tempted to get a box of cookies infused with one of their popular teas (unfortunately, they do not sell this anymore but they recently started to offer a thinner version of it which I still haven't tried). To further deviate from my initial purpose of visiting the store, a book about medicinal herbal teas caught my eye. This book, which I eventually bought along with the cookies, is called Healing Teas: How to Prepare and Use Teas to Maximize Your Health by Marie Nadine Antol.

Before I say a bit more about the book  (as this entry isn't meant to be a long, exhaustive review about the book itself), I would like to first talk about my interests in medicinal herbs in general.

When I was in high school back in Dubai still trying to decide what I wanted to major in college, I had initially followed my parents' wishes of medicine. At a certain point in my life when I really wanted to manifest more of my autonomy, my interests switched to pharmacology and then herbology! I guess I was always fascinated about natural medicine used by different cultures, especially the sort my grandmother would use (specifically the kinds used in both Gulf Arab states and Southern parts of Iran) and which is hard to find much information about (and it was only recently that I had bumped into something like this which includes how each herb can be used and a brief historical background of each).

As mentioned in one of my older posts in this blog, I connect with tea at a personal level. Therefore, finding a book that combined my interests in both herbal medicine and tea was a blessing. I find that a lot of sources on herbal medicine tend to be very biased and may even employ pseudo-scientific methods to make their exaggerated claims without considering the potential existence of the "placebo effect" (click on the link to be redirected to an interesting video about this phenomenon). However, one thing that I find unique about this book is that, it not only includes the traditional medicinal usage of tea from different parts of the world and how to make your own whether as a drinkable tea or to be used externally, but also a brief info on scientific tests that either confirmed or found mixed results regarding each of these teas' healing properties and potential side-effects of very strong ones.

Do you yourself also use teas medicinally?  Would really appreciate it if anyone chooses to share their experiences and knowledge here!

From your Tea Mate,
Reema B. :-)