Tea of the Month: Cooling Summer Tea

This month’s featured tea is a refreshing, revitalizing blend perfect for the hot summer months. Our Cooling Summer Tea is a blend of chrysanthemum, goji berry, and licorice root. We designed this tea to taste great hot or cold, and since it is a caffeine-free herbal tea, you can drink it any time day or night.

We created this tea for a practical reason: we wanted something refreshing to drink every day that was healthy, tasty, and didn’t fill us up with unnecessary sugars and calories. Unlike our decoctions, there is no recommended dosage, and this blend can be brewed in 15 minutes, rather than the 2-hour process decoction kits require. This fits in perfectly for our summer philosophy: it’s time to be on the go to take advantage of long, sunny days, but it’s also important to stay hydrated, refreshed, and healthy.

The Cooling Summer Tea is formulated using herbs that are calming and promote circulation to offset the extra strain put on the body by extreme heat and intense sun. Traditional Chinese medicine classifies chrysanthemum as a cooling herb, meaning it helps to bring down the body’s internal temperature and combats heat. Licorice root and goji berry are considered neutral herbs so they do not directly affect heat, but they have many properties that make them a great addition to this tea.

Benefits of Cooling Herbs in Traditional Chinese Medicine

Chinese Medicine seeks equilibrium. Too much heat or too much cold creates imbalances within the many systems that make up the body, such as the circulatory, digestive, and nervous system. The environment, our actions, and our diet all can contribute to this sense of balance, so it’s important to be aware of our surroundings and use herbs to counteract the negative effects of each season.

In the case of summer, it’s easy to become dehydrated and uncomfortably hot with exposure to the elements. This increased heat in the body can have an impact on heart health and circulation, increase stress and inflammation, and cause insomnia. Heat can also disrupt digestion, which impacts the body’s ability to process food, absorb nutrients, and cleanse toxins.

Benefits of Chrysanthemum

Chrysanthemum is a flower from the Asteraceae family, native to East Asia and northeastern Europe. In herbal medicine, the flowering head is often used, and that’s what is found in this tea. It is somewhat bitter and sweet, with a strong floral taste.

Chrysanthemum is often used in formulas as an anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory, and anti-bacterial herb. It can reduce fever, calm the nervous system, and open the cardiac artery. This can increase oxygen flow to the heart and prevent high blood pressure.

For our tea blend, Chrysanthemum is the most important herb to combat the heating effects of summer since it is the only ingredient with a cooling property. Chrysanthemum is one of the most refreshing and revitalizing herbs we use, and is also found in our Enlighten bath salt blend and Stress Away decoction.

Benefits of Goji Berry

Goji berry (or wolfberry) is one of our favorite herbs here at Roots. Not only does it have many medicinal benefits, but it tastes great and can be used to counteract otherwise earthy or bitter tea. Goji berries can also be eaten in their dried form, so we regularly add them to salads at home.

Research points to a number of promising benefits of goji berry, including boosting the immune system, increasing white blood cell counts, and even some anti-cancer properties. It helps to protect the liver, and also can help with high cholesterol and high blood pressure.

All of these properties make goji a perfect addition to this tea blend. Goji counteracts some of the bitterness of the chrysanthemum on the palate, adding a subtle sweetness and mild sour flavor that is fruity but not too sugary. During the summer months, we are most focused on the positive effects goji has on circulation, heart health, and liver function.

Benefits of Licorice Root

Like goji berry, licorice root is found in many formulas in our apothecary. It is a neutral, sweet herb, which means it can be added to cooling or warming formulas without counteracting the desire effects. This makes licorice a perfect sweetener for formulas all year long.

While most patients are familiar with licorice candies, the actual herb is much milder in taste. Licorice root certainly takes the edge off some more bitter herbs, but it does not instantly transform herbal formulas into southern sweet tea.

Medicinally, licorice is often used to protect the liver from toxicity. TCM practitioners often prescribe licorice to treat nutrient absorption deficiency, weakness, and loss of apetite in patients.

Roots Apothecary Cooling Summer Tea

This tea is one of our four seasonal blends, and is only available from June until the end of August. Each bag makes 10-12 cups of tea, and can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. The cooling properties of the herbs are effective whether the tea is hot or cold, and you can always add a dab of honey to satisfy your sweet tooth.

If you’d like to try this tea, come see us at our office or at the Simpsonville farmer’s market. We hope you stay cool and enjoy your summer!

Sources:

Your Guide to Health With Foods & Herbs: Using the Wisdom of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Zhang Yifang & Yao Yingzhi

The Herbarium: https://herbarium.theherbalacademy.com/monograph/licorice/