Recently, tea drinks from various herbs and berries have become very popular. One of the most popular and favorite is rosehip tea. And this is by no means a new word in health food.
The benefits of rosehip tea have been known since time immemorial
Before the fashion for black tea and coffee in our country, thirst was quenched everywhere with other drinks. In summer and autumn, in dry weather, people collected useful plants. Traditional infusions of herbs and berries that were drunk every day included tea with rose hips, the beneficial properties of which have been known since ancient times. For tea leaves, not only fruits were dried, but also flowers, leaves and even roots. The roots and leaves were used for medicinal purposes, and fragrant flowers and berries were brewed with boiling water and insisted in a warm place - such a drink turned out to be especially aromatic. Leaves of raspberries, currants, mint and other fragrant herbs were added to the rosehip. They made drinks from mixtures of rosehip berries with blueberries, sea buckthorn, chokeberry, blackberry and others.
Who can drink a decoction of wild rose fruit?
Traditional and traditional medicine, in our time, without fail recommends that everyone drink tea from rose hips. Its benefits and harms depend only on the dosage. In the spring, when we suffer from vitamin deficiency, twice a day a decoction of rose hips, or, as it is also called, wild rose, will only be appropriate. Rosehip tea is harmful only in case of excessive consumption of the drink. In reasonable amounts, it improves overall well-being, normalizes blood pressure and improves metabolism.
What does a wild rose look like and where does it grow?
Rosehip is a short, up to two meters, prickly shrub. In our country, it can be found almost everywhere, with the exception of the Arctic territories. It is also widely distributed in America and Australia. Wild rose served as the basis for selective breeding of shrubs and the cultivation of decorative varieties that are used to decorate parks, gardens, to create bouquets. The fruits of wild and cultivated roses are very similar.
These are oval berries of red-brown color, up to two centimeters in the longest part. Inside, the fruit is covered with numerous bristles, which, when ingested, cause discomfort. Seeds are white, up to two millimeters in size. For medicinal purposes, only wild species are used. Dogrose cannot be confused with any other plant. The aroma of its colors is very recognizable. No wonder the essential oils obtained from the petals of his flowers are used in perfumery to create perfumes and for aromatizing creams and lotions.
Harvesting fruits
There are many varieties of rose hips, it is also called not only wild rose, but also dog rose hips, as well as cinnamon roses, but not all of them are considered medicinal. For health and medical purposes, the fruits are not round, flattened to the center, but oval and elongated. In medicinal species, the sepals are extended forward, like a peak, and in those without vitamin value, they are curled back to the side of the berry, and almost lie on it.
The bush blooms from mid-May to July, and ripened fruits are harvested in late summer and early autumn. After frosts, they lose their healing qualities. And the beneficial properties of rosehip tea are largely due to the content in the berries of a large amount of vitamin C, which is rapidly destroyed at low temperatures.
Compote, jams, pastille are cooked from fresh rosehip berries. Fruit processing is a laborious affair, as the berries should be cleaned of internal bristles and hard seeds. From one kilogram of freshly picked berries, less than half a kilogram of raw material suitable for canning is obtained.
Inner bristles are an unpleasant feature of berries
Rosehip berries for tea can be taken fresh, dried, as well as processed into syrup or jam. Since the rosehip inside has peculiar bristles, its processing presents a certain complexity. These bristles will not cause inconvenience only if the berries are dried whole and not crushed to brew tea. Sometimes, for medicinal purposes, it is recommended to brew dry berries, previously grinding them. They do it if they want to get not only tasty, but also as much as possible saturated with valuable microelements rosehip tea. The benefits of ground berries are that they contain vitamin E, carotene, tocopherol, oleic, linoleic, linolenic and other acids more easily transferred to the drink.
What water to use?
One of the primary requirements for a tea drink is the quality of the water used for it. Recognized authority in brewing medicinal infusions - Chinese medicine - divides water into seven species. The best is mountain or key, as well as spring. This water is of the highest quality. The river follows its useful properties. Next on the list is well water. Nikolai Spafariy, who was the ambassador to Beijing in the 17th century, recalled in his notes that the Chinese did not take water for brewing tea from the nearest reservoirs, but bought at the bazaar. It was brought from the mountainous regions, and it was very expensive.
The best water temperature for brewing rose hips
The temperature of the brewing water is also of great importance. The Chinese as the most respected experts in the preparation of tea drinks distinguish a great many stages of boiling water. One of the initial stages is bubbles that look like fish eyes and a slight noise, then splash of water and splashes from a collision with the wall of the dishes, then bubbles rising from the bottom and “daring” seething. It is believed that the water most suitable for brewing tea is when rising bubbles look like the eyes of a crab. In the first stage of boiling, salt should be thrown into the water, in the second - wild rose, and in the third - a little cold water to precipitate the wild rose and revive the freshness of the water. You should know that water can not be boiled again.
10 secrets of good tea from wild rose berries
Chinese medicine has developed ten rules for the proper preparation of medicinal decoctions, in particular, tea with rosehip should be brewed. The beneficial properties of the drink will be preserved most fully if you act in accordance with the following recommendations:
- Grass or berries should be brewed in thin-walled glass or porcelain dishes. Get a good french press, in which you will make tea from rose hips. The health benefits and harms of any drug are always related to the conditions under which it was prepared. Only properly brewed drink will have health-improving properties.
- Medicinal herbs or berries should not be boiled. Rosehip only pour boiling water. The cooled water will not be able to extract useful substances from it. Long boiling water is also not suitable, since with prolonged boiling, oxygen escapes from it. Chemical reactions will be defective.
- Water should be fresh, neutral in acidity and not too harsh.
- Carefully approach the choice of a teapot, in which you will boil water to make tea from rose hips. The benefits and harms of the drink directly depend on the material of the dishes in which the water was boiled. Enameled dishes without chips are acceptable, as well as stainless steel and refractory glass. Other materials will cause undesirable chemical reactions.
- To filter the broth, you can use a plastic sieve, and metal is unsuitable for this purpose.
- Before brewing tea with rosehips, make sure that the dishes in which you are going to do this have not been used for other purposes than preparing herbal decoctions. Create a rule to store dishes for herbal infusions separately from everything else and do not use it for any other purpose.
- Before brewing tea with rosehips, calculate how many cups you are going to drink. Do not cook for the future. If you brew a dogrose in a thermos for the night, then the next day you need to drink it. Do not brew rosehip tea from the same berries.
- Dry rosehips should be stored in a metal box, laid out inside, on the walls, with clean paper. You can use glassware with tight-fitting lids for storage. It should cover fruits from direct sunlight.
- When you drink tea from rose hips, the recipe can be any. Even if your decoction is supplemented with some other herbs or berries, remember that you can not reheat it. For therapeutic purposes, it should be drunk only hot and fresh.
- If there is film or foam on the surface of the decoction, do not remove them. These are essential oils and resins, which are considered the most useful part of medicinal drink.
What determines the quality of the fruit?
Rosehip berries contain fruit sugar, organic acids. By the content of vitamin C, wild rose is ahead of almost all plant foods. Its quantity directly depends on the place of growth, degree of maturity and quality of drying and storage. Do not pick berries from bushes growing in the city. To do this, it is better to go to ecologically clean zones, which are in almost every region of Russia. Dry fruits retain their beneficial properties for two years.
The unique composition and beneficial effects of berries and tea
The fruits contain sugars, organic acids, in addition to the above vitamin C, also B vitamins (B 1 , B 2 ), vitamins P and PP, K, carotene, tannins, flavonoids, salts of iron, manganese, phosphorus, magnesium, calcium and Rosehip tea has a multivitamin, anti-inflammatory and anti-sclerotic effect. It is very effective as a choleretic and diuretic. Rosehip stops internal bleeding. Vitamin C helps increase redox processes in the body, enhances hormone synthesis and enzyme activity. In addition, it promotes tissue renewal, increases the body's resistance to adverse environmental influences.
Rosehip green tea
Green tea with rosehip is recommended to drink with hypertension, for the prevention and treatment of atherosclerosis. It is very good as a general restorative. It is better to drink it in the morning on an empty stomach. This is a good prophylactic for many diseases. It normalizes the state of the nervous system, enhances potency. Green tea with wild rose berries alleviates painful symptoms in case of gynecological and urological problems, promotes healing of internal wounds and ulcers.
Rosehip tea: benefits and harms
The diuretic properties of rose hips are used in the treatment of urolithiasis. With inflammation of the gastric mucosa caused by reduced acidity of the gastric juice, patients are also prescribed rosehip tea. Contraindications are diseases accompanied by increased acidity. Since the rosehip has a pronounced diuretic effect, it should be taken with caution to people with problems in the cardiovascular system.
Multivitamin drink
Preventive and multivitamin tea from cinnamon rose berries is brewed as follows. Two full tablespoons of dried chopped fruit is poured with a glass of boiling water and kept in a water bath for about ten minutes. Then half an hour they insist in a warm place. Filter through a gauze filter and drink a third of a glass a day after meals.
Rosehip tea helps with anemia, hemophilia, hemorrhagic diathesis, diarrhea, tuberculosis and colds, it is drunk with neurasthenia as a sedative. Rosehip helps to alleviate the course of many diseases. This is a universally recognized multivitamin and restorative agent with a wide spectrum of action.
Effective decoction for the treatment of diseases of the stomach and intestines
Due to its rich and well-balanced composition, wild rose is widely used in the treatment of a large number of diseases. The fruits of this shrub are part of many medicinal fees. With a stomach ulcer or duodenal ulcer, as well as in the case of prolonged gastritis, the following collection is very effective:
- rosehip berries, 3 parts;
- marsh coughberry (grass), 1 part;
- white rose flower petals, 1 part;
- flowers of a pharmaceutical camomile, 1 part;
- calendula flowers, 1 part;
- horsetail (shoots), 1 part;
- field wormwood (grass), 2 parts;
- common flower (grass), 2 parts;
- yarrow (flowers), 7 parts;
- plantain (leaves), 4 parts;
- St. John's wort perforated (grass), 4 parts;
- dill (seeds), 3 parts.
Pour a tablespoon of the mixture with boiling water (0.5 liters), obscure for 30 minutes, filter and drink during the day in several doses, 15-20 minutes before eating. The taste of the infusion due to wormwood and a large amount of yarrow is bitter. Rosehip tea, the recipe of which is given above, can be prepared from fresh berries and herbs. In this case, the proportions are preserved.
Rosehip tea is best sweetened with natural flower honey. Only honey should not be boiled. He will lose his useful properties from this. Try a wild rose berry drink with brown cane sugar. This is delicious.