Halloween Kicks Off the Stomach-Challenging Holiday Season. Tea is Here to Help.

Halloween Kicks Off the Stomach-Challenging Holiday Season. Tea is Here to Help.

Digestive organs command a sprawl of the body’s real estate, including the stomach, gallbladder, liver, pancreas, intestines as well as the urinary system, which also involves the kidneys and bladder. As life revolves around the consumption of fuel — food and drink — and the concomitant evacuation of waste, maintaining the digestive system’s health stands as an important health pursuit. 

Focusing on the three-layered stomach is always a wise idea. After food travels through the esophagus and lands in the stomach, enzymes in the muscular organ begin getting the food ready for digestion. In addition, acids like hydrochloric acid help transform food into chyme, a slurry of partially digested food and digestive secretions. Once the stomach finishes its work, then the rest of the digestive system plays different roles in using the food for fuel and health, and ridding the body of food-related waste.

The Feasting Season Challenges Stomachs

Tea can serve as stomach balm.

For many of us, the next two months challenge the stomach more than any other patch of days. We may overdo it during Halloween (coming this Monday!) and scarf down too much candy, which interferes with digestion. The body’s ability to break down sugar has limits; if it can’t process it all, the sugar heads to the bowels, where it ferments and eventually creeps its way through the large intestine, feeding unwanted bacteria and yeast.

Following Halloween, we enter the holiday zone, complete with the feeding frenzy known as Thanksgiving, a parade of parties, and holiday feasts that like Thanksgiving tend to incorporate quite a bit of meat, white flour, sugar, fat and booze. All of the above influence digestion, and impact the stomach, in regrettable ways.

Few people yearn to say goodbye to all of the merry-making spanning the weeks between Halloween and New Year’s Day. The year’s final months bring family and friends together for convivial gatherings, encourage us to cook and eat with brio and spark the eruption of myriad opportunities for a third glass of sparkling wine, a fifth holiday cookie on a Friday night, yet another helping of turkey cradled with mashed potatoes and stuffing and cloaked in gravy. Saying goodbye to the seasonal Saturnalia would sting.

To help our bodies surmount the season’s digestive trials, we try to eat as healthy as possible when we’re not digging into dishes like beef rib roast with Yorkshire pudding. And we drink tea, too. Many teas include botanical ingredients that help the stomach perform its job.

This selection of teas, including two herbals and one oolong, offer tantalizing flavors as well as balm for the stomach. Try them all, as you revel across November and December.


Teas for Stomachs: Ginger Refresh

Tea for Stomachs
People around the world turn to ginger to settle and soothe stomachs.

We adore this house blend of lemongrass, peppermint, ginger, licorice and lemon peel for its bright, zesty flavor and its pick-me-up qualities. In China, practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) prescribe ginger to people who feel lethargic and seek energy. 

But we also appreciate its ability to soothe stomachs and bolster digestion. People who practice TCM don’t urge ginger only upon people seeking zip in their steps; they also suggest that people consume ginger to calm tempestuous stomachs and optimize the body’s digestive processes.

Another Ginger Refresh ingredient, lemongrass, also aids digestion. A 2012 study published by the National Institutes of Health, for example, revealed that lemongrass may help mitigate gastric ulcers, and protect the stomach lining from damage resulting from aspirin and alcohol. If the rest of your 2022 involves more booze than normal, this lemongrass-rich tea could help the stomach process the excess ethanol.


Teas for Stomachs: Blue Spring

Blue Spring’s dusting of licorice root powder ramps up flavor – and helps the stomach do its important work.

This oolong tea, from beautiful Fujian province along China’s southeast coast, has been one of our most popular teas for many years. The reason? Flavor! The oolong is beautiful, but Blue Spring incorporates another step that boosts flavor even further. After harvest, tea farmers roll the leaves into pellets and then dust them with licorice root powder. The subtle licorice notes offer a sweet aftertaste, soothe sore throats and also promote focused mental energy.

But the licorice root also settles the stomach. Many studies have revealed that licorice root both prevents and treats ulcers by fomenting mucus production in the stomach, which protects and pacifies the stomach lining. In addition, it helps keep ulcers away by ratcheting back the body’s production of gastrin. Finally, licorice root helps boost the amount of blood that gets directed to the stomach, which fosters healing.

Blue Springs digestive advantages do not end with the licorice root. In China people often sip oolong tea after meals, to help their stomachs break down the foods and aid digestion.

As oolong tea does contain caffeine, this may be more of a morning or afternoon tea for people whose sleep gets disrupted by caffeine.


Tea for Stomachs: Colibri Blend

Teas for Stomachs
Hibiscus is a valuable tool for improving stomach health.

Here’s a bright antidote to holiday season stomach doldrums — a house blend of a tea celebrating Mexico. A Ku Cha team member with deep roots in Mexico crafted this delicious tea to capture the kinds of beverages he commonly sipped in the 32-state nation. 

Hibiscus anchors this tea, and its cinnamon, ginger, peppermint and orange lean Colibri Blend firmly into holiday flavors. In addition to savoring sipping this tea, which is also wonderful as iced tea, it is versatile in the kitchen, adding flavor and color to everything from muffins to punch to duck.

Among those baking flavors, peppermint and ginger in particular help the stomach digest food. But the hibiscus is a stomach champion too. One medical study examining hibiscus and stomach cancer, for example, found that botanical compounds found in hibiscus “could be developed as a chemopreventitive agent” — in other words, could help prevent the development of stomach cancer.

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