custom herbal tea to help manage my parents diabetes

Tisanes prepared from plants not belonging to the Camellia genus
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tea_noob
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Tue Dec 01, 2020 1:16 am

Hi all,

Hope this message finds you well.

My parents are not in the best of health. My father is 62 and has been diabetic for over a decade. He manages it by eating "okay" and walking a lot daily. My mother is 57, and she has been recently diagnosed as diabetic also. She on the other hand does not eat too well and is not very active. They both also have high blood pressure.

A friend of mine recommended that I look into herbal teas, so that brought me here. I was able to find a product on Amazon that seems to be a good for for my parents, but its quite expensive:



The ingredients for this Amazon herbal tea are;
Tulsi leaf
Turmeric root
lavender petals
stevia
sencha
ginger
fennel seed
dandelion root
"natural flavoring" <-- whatever this means (shrug)

Based on the above ingredients, I started looking at getting each ingredient seperately and building the tea bags for them myself. Below are the ingredients I was able to get;

Fennel Seeds <-- I got extra fennel seeds because Tulsi leaf was quite expensive and read that this was an okay one to one replacement.
Turmeric root
ginger root
lavender petals
stevia
sencha
Dandelion flower

I made the above herbal tea, and the flavor was not very good. So then I went out and also purchased Cinnamon Bark, as well as dried Hibiscus petals, and it now tastes much better.

What brings me here? Now that I have all of the ingredients with me, I'm wondering whats the best ratio of ingredients to put in the teabags for my parents so that they get a good tasting tea, that has maximum benefits for diabetes and high blood pressure.


Sincerely,
tea_noob
Last edited by pedant on Tue Dec 01, 2020 2:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: mod edit: formatting
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pedant
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Tue Dec 01, 2020 2:50 am

a few approaches come to mind.

you can attempt to reverse engineer the ratios based on taste, but note that the flavor potency may be different if your ingredients are of a different freshness or quality than what was used in the commercial formulation. keep tweaking it until it tastes right, i suppose.

you can also attempt to visually reverse engineer it. take a few grams or so and try to painstakingly separate the particles based on how they look. once the different looking components are in separate piles, try to guess what they are (possibly also based on taste and smell). you can arrive at an approximate formula that way.

as far as health effects, i honestly have no idea, but you could try doing literature searches on medicinal properties of the herbs in question. if any efficacy has been scientifically demonstrated, you can potentially find dosage information in those studies. keeping that info in mind, you could include the minimum effective dose for each thing in your blend depending on how much of it they drink in a day or whatever.
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Youzi
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Tue Dec 01, 2020 5:02 am

Tea isn't really going to help. It's all about diet and cutting out carbs.
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Bok
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Tue Dec 01, 2020 5:20 am

Well, tea can help in the way of reducing the crave to eat or drink something otherwise unhealthy for starters.

I also want to congratulate you on your efforts to try this hard to rebuild this tea in order to help your parents! Nice!
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LeoFox
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Tue Dec 01, 2020 8:41 am

Bok wrote:
Tue Dec 01, 2020 5:20 am
Well, tea can help in the way of reducing the crave to eat or drink something otherwise unhealthy for starters.

I also want to congratulate you on your efforts to try this hard to rebuild this tea in order to help your parents! Nice!
I second this. If tea can replace sugary drinks and alcohol, then i would expect there would be a positive impact, as long as there is compliance.

Also, @tea_noob
Be aware that there are some liver toxicities associated with cassia cinnamon (you can easily look this up). Ceylon cinnamon does not have this issue. I like to buy mine from elephant chateau.
.m.
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Thu Dec 03, 2020 9:45 am

I would suggest to use less ingredients and concentrate on the taste - you cannot expect much success with it unless it's tasty and your parents actually enjoy drinking it. The ingredients you listed make for a strange mix which i cannot even imagine. But there might be a couple of different herbal teas in them worth on their own.
- fresh turmeric and ginger tea with a dash of lemon is nice and good if one gets a cold (but the spiciness of it might motivate to add honey to it), on the other hand powdered stuff is just horrible, although dried slices might be ok,
- stevia is an aquired taste, usually things taste better without sweeteners but that's subjective of course,
- sencha might be better served alone, or with some flowers (jasmine, rose, maybe the lavender?), also might not be a good choice in the evening,
- dandelion root and dandelion flower are two very different things, tastewise and probably medicinally as well
- hibiscus is very nice and refreshing on its own and combines well with citrus and other things
- tulsi/holy basil is good for nerves and can be nice alone
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debunix
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Thu Dec 03, 2020 10:24 am

When making my own herbal tea blends, I also find less can be more: I try less to mix ‘one perfect blend for all seasons’ and more one time more tulsi and spices, another time more ginger and citrus, another time hibiscus with hydrangea (gamro). Several versions with variety and pleasing flavors are more fun than one where things are so complicated as to be overwhelming or bland. If you get them right, they can be appealing enough individually to get the same overall effects from alternating them.
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Victoria
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Thu Dec 03, 2020 11:52 am

You might want to get a Chinese herb decoction kettle to extract the full potential of herbal roots and leaves, or a Japanese dobin to boil the herbs. I agree with above comments regarding less is more, in the past I’ve tried to mimic Dr Schultz Detox Tea by buying all the individual ingredients listed and ended up buying enough herbs to last many more years than necessary. Here is an instructional on boiling medicinal herbs.


Japanese dobin
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Traditional Chinese herbal medicine cooking pot
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Baisao
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Sun Dec 06, 2020 2:05 am

Another thing to note is that you may want to avoid turmeric as it is very commonly adulterated with lead to give a more appealing color for buyers while also cutting the amount of actual turmeric. It’s not trace amounts of lead either, but enough to cut the product with.

I now avoid all turmeric unless it’s the fresh rhizome.
pase22
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Sun Dec 06, 2020 9:08 am

Any tea will be beneficial by helping regulate blood sugar along with countless other health benefits associated with regular tea consumption. If you let them choose whatever tea they like, they're much more likely to keep consuming it as opposed to force feeding them something because it's what you feel is best for them. A healthier diet would definitely help, but it may take some time for them to adjust.

I'm a type 2 diabetic and I drink 5-6 cups of tea (mostly black because that's what I like most) and it really does benefit my health. I tried all those wellness teas and didn't like any of them.
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debunix
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Sun Dec 06, 2020 11:58 am

Baisao wrote:
Sun Dec 06, 2020 2:05 am
Another thing to note is that you may want to avoid turmeric as it is very commonly adulterated with lead to give a more appealing color for buyers while also cutting the amount of actual turmeric. It’s not trace amounts of lead either, but enough to cut the product with.

I now avoid all turmeric unless it’s the fresh rhizome.
This is a very good point. I'm lucky enough to live where can easily get it as a rhizome. I think the curcurmin itself is the flavor element that I don't enjoy so much from turmeric, however, so I rarely use it. I adore ginger, OTOH, and use a lot of it in cooking and baking and tea.
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Stephen
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Tue Dec 08, 2020 12:22 am

As an acupuncturist and herbalist I'll try to add my 2 cents here.

Those ingredients should be fairly inexpensive. I'd suggest just mixing them to your taste and put about 2g into a teabag. If you don't want to make tea bags, there are products that are similar, like this - https://shop.organicindiausa.com/produc ... ric-ginger

Drinking just green tea (preferably with meals) may be about as beneficial. Green tea reduces blood sugar.

Other than that I'd suggest to make sure that your parents see their regular physician and get any medications they need. They might also benefit from a visit to a dietician. There are plenty of ways to treat it with holistic health too, and of course diet and lifestyle are most important.

Hope that helps. It's great that you're doing this for them.
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