Do you get any medicinal value if you drink tea with cold water and not brew it? Thanks in advance.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 and is filed under herbal water.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
3 Responses to “Drinking Herbal Tea With Cold Water?”
Janet S on January 20th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
It depends on what herb it is and how long you steep it. Most plants will yield some of their properties in cold water: chamomile, raspberry leaf, hibiscus and lemon balm do well. If it is an herb that goes well with lemon, go ahead and put the lemon juice in to speed the extraction of herbs high in minerals, like nettles. Sometimes cold water is best, for instance, if you are trying to avoid the tannic acid in a tree bark. Typically a cold brew will take an hour or more to be effective. Some herbs should be left in the refrigerator overnight to extract. Some hard barks, seeds and roots will not extract in cold water at all and a few will only extract in alcohol, like Black Cohosh.
Philip M on January 20th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
No, there is no medicinal value to drinking tea with cold water unless you are drinking a cup of hot tea with a separate glass of cold water; then the benefit is increased water intake.
You may burn more calories when you drink tea “cold brew” because your body works to heat up the water to a comfortable digestive temperature once you’ve consumed it but there is no real advantage. Also, when you consume something at a higher temperature, it is generally easier to digest because the particles consumed are more spread apart and easier to break up.
BSherman on January 21st, 2010 at 1:42 am
Tea is not a medication, therefore it has no medicinal value.
Hot or cold . . . tea is just a drink.
It depends on what herb it is and how long you steep it. Most plants will yield some of their properties in cold water: chamomile, raspberry leaf, hibiscus and lemon balm do well. If it is an herb that goes well with lemon, go ahead and put the lemon juice in to speed the extraction of herbs high in minerals, like nettles. Sometimes cold water is best, for instance, if you are trying to avoid the tannic acid in a tree bark. Typically a cold brew will take an hour or more to be effective. Some herbs should be left in the refrigerator overnight to extract. Some hard barks, seeds and roots will not extract in cold water at all and a few will only extract in alcohol, like Black Cohosh.
No, there is no medicinal value to drinking tea with cold water unless you are drinking a cup of hot tea with a separate glass of cold water; then the benefit is increased water intake.
You may burn more calories when you drink tea “cold brew” because your body works to heat up the water to a comfortable digestive temperature once you’ve consumed it but there is no real advantage. Also, when you consume something at a higher temperature, it is generally easier to digest because the particles consumed are more spread apart and easier to break up.
Tea is not a medication, therefore it has no medicinal value.
Hot or cold . . . tea is just a drink.