Warm therapy when you’re under the weather

FOR many people, any feeling of illness or fatigue is naturally followed by a fortifying cup of tea – and has for millennia. What is it about tea? Does it really have healing properties?

“Drinking something warm seems to be a basic human need, especially for people feeling under the weather,” says Ursula Sellerberg, spokeswoman for Germany’s Federal Chamber of Pharmacists (BAK).

“Simply the ritual of making and drinking tea is relaxing and can help to calm you down after a stressful day. It bolsters the immune system indirectly, as it were,” remarks Dr Robert Fuerst, director of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Biology at the University of Frankfurt in Germany.

Tea can be broadly divided into two categories: commercial and medicinal. The former includes rosehip tea, herbal tea and black tea, for example.

“Commercial teas can be found in supermarkets,” Sellerberg says. “Like all foodstuffs, they’re supposed to be unharmful, but you shouldn’t expect them to have a pharmaceutical effect.”

Medicinal teas are found mainly in pharmacies. Some teas labelled as over-the-counter medicines can also be found in supermarkets or nondispensing chemist’s shops.

It wouldn’t be unusual to see a package of commercial peppermint tea on a chemist’s shop shelf next to a package of peppermint tea labelled as a medicine. The quality of the tea plants used to make the drink varies.

While many teas will talk up their health benefits, actual medicinal teas should only comprise dried plant parts that meet strict pharmaceutical guidelines. Their ingredients should also have been examined and checked for contaminants.

“The quality standards for medicinal teas are higher than for commercial teas many times over,” Fuerst points out.

“Every single batch of tea that a manufacturer puts on the market is rigorously checked.”

Take chamomile tea, for instance. Under pharmaceutical guidelines, it must consist of flowers.

“The chamomile tea you can buy in the supermarket usually contains herbage, leaves and stems as well. It tastes like chamomile, which is fully sufficient for a foodstuff,” Sellerberg says.

“Medicinal chamomile tea, on the other hand, consists only of flowers and hence is higher in essential oils and other valuable ingredients.”

So if you want a tasty, chamomile-flavoured drink, the supermarket tea is a good – and less expensive – choice.

But if it’s a tea with a medicinal effect you’re looking for – say, to ease gastrointestinal discomfort – you should probably get chamomile tea from a pharmacy.

Technically speaking, tea is an infusion, a beverage prepared by extracting water-soluble substances from cured tea leaves in hot or boiling water.

“Tea always makes sense for me when the ingredients are drawn out of the medicinal plants with hot water and have an effect in the body,” says Fuerst.

But how effective are medicinal teas really?

Clinical studies of them are tricky.

“Everyone makes tea a little bit differently – the amount of tea, steeping time and water temperature vary,” notes Sellerberg.

Since conclusive scientific evidence is lacking, the health benefits of many teas can only be said to be plausible.

However, as Fuerst puts it, “the compositions of medicinal teas are known, and it can definitely be said that medicinal teas are quite helpful in easing indisposition.”

The therapy they provide is mild, though.

“Tea’s ingredients bolster the body’s self-healing powers, especially in the case of self-limiting illnesses such as the common cold,” Sellerberg says. “And tea has hardly any side effects. Symptoms are alleviated, and they subside more pleasantly.” – dpa