Tea for Tuesday: for health 9 December 2008 11:59 pm
Posted by Tracy in : advice,consumerism,health,reviews,tea , trackbackAnother herbal tea this Tuesday — an herbal tea genre to be exact. You see, last Friday I came down with my traditional end-of-the-term Martian death plague (which of course was completely awesome for my eel paper–writing, as you may imagine). Aches (not just from riding the mechanical bull at Mason-Dixon for Ophelia’s not-a-birthday-party), stiffness (even after yoga), chills, dizziness, general feeling that the contents of my head might be about to melt or explode (or both), you know the drill. Stuff to whine about, and of course I did (and am still doing so, clearly). But I knew I was really sick, and not just whining for the sake of whining, when I had my first cup of echinacea tea — and it tasted good.
I know, I know. “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.” It’s hippie crap, and probably just a placebo to boot. As long as it works (by which I mean makes me feel better), I don’t care. Pass the honey. Here’s a quick review of my hippie-tea-for-health adventures.
(By the way, the eel paper turned out fine. I turned it in around 6 AM Sunday morning, then went to bed for many hours and still felt healthy enough for an IKEA run later in the day. But I’m still drinking plenty of tea, even if fluids may not be as important to healing from a cold as previously thought.)
The tea that proved that I was sick by tasting good was Organic Echinacea Plus Herbal Tea by Traditional Medicinals. I’ve gone through like half a box in the past few days. Unfortunately Amazon only seems to sell it in cases of six packages of sixteen bags, which is more than I hope anyone reading this needs, because dang. The volume discount is pretty sweet, but if you need that much echinacea tea, you might also need a doctor.
I’m actually not a big fan of the other all-around generic “echinacea for healing” tea, Yogi Tea Echinacea Immune Support, but I thought I should include it for the sake of completeness or something (and maybe because they’re a Eugene company and I’m feeling sentimental, who knows?) The tea itself is just a bit… much, somehow, like its creators decided to use a little bit of every single plant that might possibly be beneficial. Or maybe that’s just my anti-licorice preferences talking.
Speaking of my dislike of licorice tea, that’s my beef with Traditional Medicinals Teas Lemon Echinacea Throat Coat
On the other hand, TM’s Cold Care PM? Total winner, despite its rocking an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach, which had me a little suspicious. It’s sort of like Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime (a perennial favorite with me) only with some echinacea mixed into the chamomile and spearming for good measure. And now that I put it like that, Sleepytime seems totally redundant to my tea collection, even at the holy-cats-that’s-so-cheap-I-have-to-link-it Amazon price (6 boxes of 40 bags for $24 comes to ten cents a bag, woo!) But seriously, I added a new chamomile tea to the cabinet just last week! Back to the Cold Care: again, Amazon does not seem to be selling single boxes, but pairs are much less ridiculous than six-packs. You can always send me the extra one.
Finally, while I was browsing around Amazon for pictures to include with this review (and, y’know, shameless pluggery — they give me a cut if you follow any of my site’s links there and buy anything, not just what’s linked) I ran across Traditional Medicinals’ seasonal herb tea sampler, which includes Echinacea Plus, the non-echinacea version of Throat Coat, and two more teas I haven’t tried (yet): Gypsy Cold Care and Breathe Easy. They both seem to involve licorice, or I’d say this box is a great price for lots of tea experimentation. Readers, have any of you tried either of them? It looks like Breathe Easy involves eucalyptus, which might be strong enough to overwhelm the licorice, and I’m certainly at the ewwwy-gooey wanting-to-breathe-easy-again stage of recovering from my cold. Also, I seem to recall once liking a Celestial Seasonings eucalyptus-echinacea tea… but maybe it was just the sickness talking to my tastebuds.
Readers: Any recommendations for me (since I’m clearly not quite drowning in tea yet)? What’s your favorite thing to drink when you’re sick?
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Peter L.
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Peter L.
