Tea, Disease, and H1N1

For ages people have been drinking tea to empower them during an illness. Not only does the caffeine help fight headaches, and give you the willpower to keep on keeping on, but many teas also have high antioxidant levels, and white tea has been shown to have antibacterial effects as well as be effective in preventing cancer. The heat of the tea can also help to open your airways, as well as soothe your throat as the drink coats it. Finally, herbal teas (without the caffeine diuretic) can help keep you hydrated.

But besides these normal effects, tea can be particularly effective in battling the biggest new flu on the block (swine flu/H1N1) . Because the H1N1 virus cannot live in your stomach, and because it often lives in your throat, gargling with warm salt water, or drinking hot drinks like tea can help loosen the mucus in your throat, and send the infected cells down to the uninhabitable stomach, helping keep your system swine flu free.

Cheers -
Teb

I Say Herbal You Say No Thanks

The title refers to this video . In honesty I disagree with this take on herbal tea, but unlike tea made from the tea tree I mostly enjoy herbal teas at night. The obvious reason for this is that tea is caffeinated and drinking caffeine right before you want to fall asleep tends not to work out for me.

Herbal teas can be made from a huge variety of plants, so vast that saying 'herbal tea' is close to saying 'a hot drink made by bathing some sort of leaves in water'. Some of the more popular herbal teas include chamomile, made from the chamomile flower, native to Egypt; Peppermint tea, made from peppermint leaves; Red teas are technically herbal as they are not made from the tea tree plant. There are thousands of others, and in fact making your own herbal tea is fairly easy!

So this MC may not love his herbal tea, but give me a chamomile late at night and I'll say "yes please"

Cheers - Teb