Chamomile Tea

The Amazing Benefits of Chamomile Tea

The world we live in is a hectic place and getting busier every single day. There’s always something new to get stressed about and every day it gets tougher to unwind, relax and sleep at the end of a tough day. You could take a handful of pills to help you relax, or cure your indigestion or treat that migraine headache. Or you could just drink a cup of natural chamomile tea instead and watch your worries, aches and pains just drift away.

Chamomile plants themselves are very similar to daisies (they look almost identical) and have been used for centuries to treat an incredibly wide range of health problems like insomnia, anxiety, muscle problems, burns and scrapes, skin conditions, migraine headaches, stomach and menstrual cramp problems. It’s pretty amazing how one single plant can be used to treat, and possibly even cure, so many different health problems. Chamomile was even known as the “plant doctor” because it was said that planting it near a dying plant would, quite literally, bring it back to life.

So how does chamomile tea manage to do this? With any infusion of an herbal plant you’re releasing some or all of the oils contained in the plant itself. When you extract chamomile oil the active ingredient in it is something called bisabolol which just happens to be an effective anti-irritant and anti-inflammatory treatment with excellent anti-microbial properties too. This ingredient is basically an entire medicine cabinet from just one single plant.

There are some people out there who’ll say there’s no medical proof that natural treatments like chamomile tea actually work. But there’s growing research in this area and the laboratories are starting to back what the homeopaths have been saying for years – chamomile is an excellent alternative treatment for a wide variety of health issues.

But for all the health problems and ailments chamomile tea is famous for treating it’s most famous for being a relaxant and for helping people deal with stress. It’s estimated that more than 1,000,000 cups of this type of tea are consumed every single day to help people unwind. I’d imagine this is a very conservative figure though.

A chamomile tea isn’t hard to create and can be made by infusing either fresh or dried chamomile leaves – depending on what you can get your hands on. Most health food stores will at least stock dried chamomile leaves – I’ve never had any problems finding them. You can tell the smell of chamomile quickly – it has a crushed apple scent to it.

Large doses of chamomile tea can cause drowsiness so make sure that you’re not going to be driving, operating machinery or doing anything other than laying down and going to sleep if you’ve had too much of this tea. And if you happen to suffer from hay fever then be careful of using chamomile plants or tea – they can cause a reaction.

Just like any other natural herbal treatment you need to be careful with taking chamomile tea because just because something is a natural treatment doesn’t mean that you can’t have an allergic reaction to it (although this is very rare).

That being said chamomile is a wonderful way for treating everything from anxiety to scalds and burns and it smells great too!