Cover Your Tea For Maximum Benefit

Herbal tea is a delicious way to nurture your body, mind, and soul. It warms you up from the inside out and provides you with an excellent and diverse source of phytonutrients; compounds only found in plants.

Most herbs also contain important essential oils that can calm and nurture our wellbeing. To ensure that you retain all the benefits of your herbal tea, make sure that you are covering your tea cup as it steeps.

The essential oils, mainly terpenes, are quite volatile and will evaporate when exposed to heat. In order to contain those oils so that they don’t float away with the steam, cover your mug! and steep your tea for 10 minutes or longer.

There are some companies out there that sell a tea infuser and a little cover, but even a bowl, small plate, another mug, or anything that will cover your mug and keep the steam from escaping will do the trick.

Why do we want to contain the oils? Terpenes have various therapeutic effects and are most effective in the proportions produced by the plant. This synergy is often called the entourage effect, meaning that the compounds are more most beneficial when consumed together as opposed to extracted and isolated.

So get the most out of your herbal teas by covering it, steeping it for 10+ minutes, and sipping mindfully. 

Zum Wohl (Good Health)!