Spring is here, and your body wants to clear out the winter blah and detoxify. The Liver and Gall Bladder are revved up and ready to go. Herbs can be a great help to this process, and there are some great tea blends available right at your health food store.
How do you know which one is right for you?
The basic ingredients you want to look for in a spring detox tea are roots that are traditionally dug up and eaten at this time. The two most common ones I see are:
Burdock Root and Dandelion Root
You can find many tea blends with these ingredients. This is a general guideline to help you choose the other herbs that are in your tea blend.
Warming Herbs Treat Cold Signs like: a tendency to have cold hands and feet, and may feel tired and sluggish often.
Cooling Herbs Treat Hot Signs like: irritability, constant thirst, constipation, red and irritated eyes, or skin redness, itching, or breakouts.
If there is a balance between warming and cooling ingredients, then it’s a good blend for people with some cold symptoms, and some hot symptoms.
Warming Ingredients: Ginger Black Pepper Cardamom Cinnamon Cloves
Cooling Ingredients: Forsythia Fruit Gardenia Fruit Honeysuckle Flowers Rhubard Root
Let’s look at a couple products I picked up from the store.
“Detox Tea”
Cooling
Indian Sarsaparilla Root Burdock Root Dandelion Root Chinese Amur Cork Tree Bark Japanese Honeysuckle Flower Forsythia Fruit Gardenia Fruit Chinese Goldenthread Root Rhubarb Root Winter Melon Seed Juniper Berry Extract These are some great cooling herbs, many used in Chinese Medicine, to treat red, hot, swollen skin conditions, and intestinal imbalances like candida. They also help cleanse the liver and soothe irritability and a short temper, or red, irritated eyes.
This Detox Tea also contains many warming herbs.
Warming Cinnamon Bark Ginger Root Licorice Root Cardamom Seed Clove Bud Black Pepper Long Pepper Berry These warming herbs help to stimulate the digestive fire and bring heat into the belly and circulation.
If someone has all HOT signs (the ones listed under the cooling herbs), I would not recommend this product. This tea would be a good one for someone who has some of the red, hot signs, but overall feels cold or has a weak digestive system. It’s also a good tea for the beginning weeks of spring, when we are still experiencing some cold weather.
“Roasted Dandelion Spice Detox”
Dandelion Root Cinnamon Bark Cocoa Shells Cardamom Seed Ginger Root Clove Bud Black Pepper
This tea has all warming herbs. The dandelion is a cool herb, it is roasted, which warms it up. If you don’t have the HOT signs we listed above, and want to warm up your body while helping to support your liver, then this is the right tea for you.
Disclaimer: If you are on prescription medications or have a serious illness, ask your doctor before taking any herbal supplement.
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