The Benefits of Homemade Tea for Health and Home

The Benefits of Tea

After water, tea is the world’s most popular beverage. Whether you drink black, green, or oolong tea, they’re all produced from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis bush.

You’ve no doubt seen references to the research suggesting that tea, especially unfermented (green) tea, may deliver many health benefits.

Drinking black tea may lower the risk of heart attack and atherosclerosis (build-up in your arteries). Drinking green or black tea may reduce the risk of developing several cancers, including bladder, esophageal and pancreatic cancers. Drinking black, oolong or green tea appears to lower the risk of ovarian cancer.

Applied topically, tea can relieve the discomfort of rashes, stings, and hemorrhoids, and may help to reduce acne flare-ups.

The Best Tea for Health

The best tea for health is green tea because it’s linked to so many health benefits, including cancer prevention. It also helps control weight loss, blood pressure, and cholesterol. 

The “fermentation” (actually oxidation) processes that yield the many other forms of tea deepen and alter the flavors of the leaves, but they also remove some of the plant compounds (“phytocompounds”) that deliver tea’s health benefits. Green teas undergo very minimal oxidation, so the best choice if you like its flavoring.

Of course, many teas are healthy. Ginger tea helps with nausea and digestion. Herbal teas help with inflammation, clear airwaves, and relieve asthma and allergy symptoms. Peppermint tea has menthol and is helpful when you have a cold with congestion.

Learn more about making herbal teas.

Which Form of Tea?

Once you begin delving into the subject of tea, it’s easy to get confused. Will it be loose, bagged, powdered, brewed, and/or bottled? Chai, citrus, or jasmine? A green-tea extract? A tincture, a pill, a syrup, or a soda? What about a snack? 

Why not start by brewing some loose green tea leaves from a specialty or health-food store near you? If you live near an Asian market, you’ll have a much larger choice. Buy small quantities and store them in airtight containers in the freezer to maintain their flavor and potency.

By the way, if you want to maximize the health benefits of tea, drink it without milk. Proteins in the milk decrease the concentration of many of tea’s beneficial phytocompounds. 

How to Brew Tea

Before you start brewing tea, we recommend a tea ball (usually a metal basket to steep and then remove your tea leaves). However, you could also simply add tea leaves to a cup of hot water and strain them after they’ve steeped. Some people even leave the tea leaves in and consume a few along with the liquid.

Add 1 teaspoon of tea leaves to your tea ball or cup. Then boil the water. The hotter the water (closer to boiling) and the longer the steeping, the more healthful will be the plant compounds that the water will extract. However, since some of these compounds are bitter, many tea lovers prefer a briefer steeping time for their sipping teas.

Using Tea in Cooking

What about liberating tea from the beverage category and using the leaves themselves in cooking? Many books on the market delve into the science and art of cooking with tea.

Try adding strong tea to meat or poultry marinades, soups, stocks, and gravies. Or try adding the reconstituted leaves themselves to omelets, soups, or stir-fries. Think of them as a leafy vegetable. Eating them adds nutrients and fiber to the medicinal punch this plant delivers.

Home Remedies Using Tea

• The astringent properties in tea, called tannins, make it a natural skin toner. Helps acne, too.
• Used as a final rinse, tea conditions, and restores shine to hair.
• Dry tea leaves absorb odors, as does baking soda. Leave a few bags in the fridge, or drop some into shoes, pocketbooks, and cars.
• Strong tea left in cooking pots overnight will remove burned-on food and stains.
• Cool tea sponged onto the skin offers relief from poison ivy, hives, or insect bites.

For centuries, Asian cultures have used the gentle rituals of tea ceremonies for social, religious, and spiritual purposes. Here’s a description of how a modern physician adapts the ancient ceremony to his daily life.