Cloves are extremely popular, and a staple in the kitchen of many people around the world. While its strong flavor can help take dishes to the next level, you stand to benefit from its myriad of health effects by simply brewing clove tea.
If you’ve never had clove tea before, but are looking for ways to increase your consumption of cloves, this could be just the thing you are looking for.
What Is Clove Tea?
Clove tea is, as the name suggests, a strong tea made from dried and ground flower buds from the clove tree. Cloves are renowned for being a rich source of a compound known as eugenol, which gives its characteristic flavor. Making clove tea has been done traditionally in parts of the world where it can be found growing natively for many centuries, owing in large part to its many benefits on health.
12 Amazing Benefits of Clove Tea
1. Helps Promote Recovery From Sinus Infections
Sinus infections are more often troublesome than they are serious, even though it is in your best interest to try and speed up recovery from such. Drinking clove tea can help reduce congestion, and can even help reduce overall bacterial load, which can assist your immune system with getting rid of the bacteria causing infection.
Clove tea also possesses strong anti-inflammatory actions which can reduce associated sinus inflammation and make breathing easier.
2. Natural Remedy For Fever
Long before the advent of readily available over-the-counter fever reducers, clove was used to help reduce fevers. Fevers can be extremely dangerous, especially in children, where they can cause brain damage and lead to seizures. Drinking clove tea for its ability to reduce body temperature has been done for centuries, and also to stimulate the immune system to take care of foreign microbes that may be causing infection.
3. Can Help Reduce Arthritis Pain
In addition to possessing strong anti-inflammatory actions, drinking clove the can also help deliver analgesia to deal with the symptoms of painful arthritis. Some people even claim that using clove in the form of tea but applied locally to the joints that are painful may also help offer support.
4. May Assist With Weight Loss
Drinking any sort of warm or hot beverage kicks the metabolism into gear, but drinking clove tea can help by also increasing the utilization of calories to produce energy. Clove tea can subsequently help reduce the storage of new fat into cells, making it an ideal support when on a weight loss diet.
5. Antiparasitic Actions
Intestinal parasites are still a major public health concern in third world and developing countries where widespread sanitation may not be the best. As such, poor food preparation and handling can inadvertently leave parasites within animal based products that are transmitted to humans when they subsequently consume these animal meats.
Drinking clove tea may help decrease the parasite burden in the intestines, especially when it comes to tapeworms that are known to cause nutritional deficiency if not appropriately dealt with.
6. Promotes Skin Health
One of the most important prerequisite for good skin health is to ensure that you consume enough water on a daily basis. Of course, any tea will help you meet your requirements for daily water, but clove also helps reduce oxidative stress burden borne by the skin, especially as a result of UV damage. In turn, the appearance of wrinkles, dark spots and blemishes owing to excessive sun exposure is reduced in like manner.
7. Supports Healthy Digestion
Drinking clove tea stimulates the production of several digestive enzymes, including saliva and hydrochloric acid in the stomach. This makes the digestion process more effective, and coupled with the fact that it also stimulates intestinal motility, you are likely to experience regular bowel motions as well.
If you suffer from chronic constipation, drinking more clove tea may be an excellent step in the right direction
8. Excellent For Oral Health
Cloves have been used for centuries for their ability to help manage toothaches, but as it turns out cloves are excellent for overall oral health. Clove tea may be even better suited for this purpose, since chewing on clove sticks by themselves is not a good idea. Making into tea, on the other hand, increases its convenience significantly, as it can now be rinsed around amount to reduce bacterial load and also help stimulate the gums.
If you are experiencing transient toothache or gum line pain, try some clove tea. Swish some, and drink some. Experience the best of both worlds.
9. May Help Decrease Cancer Risk
Drinking clove tea still supplies all the benefits of clove you have come to know of, also lending itself to reducing overall cancer risk in the process.
Clove tea is even being investigated as a possible natural remedy for effecting radical cure of the esophageal cancers, as it had been found to trigger the death of more than 80% of such cancerous cells.
However, the fact of the matter is that many of lab findings use highly concentrated forms of the oil that are not naturally found in cloves, so it might be irresponsible to expect a cure. However, it can definitely help reduce damage to cells that usually initiate cancerous changes.
10. Helps Support Liver Health
Would you be excited to know that regular consumption of clove and clove tea can actually turn the hands of time backward on one of the body’s most important organs-the liver? Small-scale studies have shown promise that cloves can actually help to reverse signs of fatty liver disease, decreasing inflammation and even helping recovery from cirrhosis.
Cloves can also help decrease levels of enzymes involved in detoxification, which usually indicate excessive stress on this organ. It is also important to note, however, that clove oil in very high amounts can have the opposite effect and be damaging to the liver.
11. Can Help Support Healthy Blood Sugar Levels
Drinking clove tea – preferably unsweetened, can have a positive impact on blood sugar management, helping to increase the uptake of blood sugar and also enhancing insulin sensitivity and secretion. High blood sugar levels causes damage in diabetics, especially to the nerves and blood vessels. This is why it is very important to try and keep your blood sugar levels within the normal accepted ranges.
12. May Help With Healing Of Gastric Ulcers
Clove oil in its pure form is highly corrosive, and not advised for consumption as it can actually bring about stomach ulcers. However, consuming clove tea is extremely beneficial when dealing with stomach ulcers, as it has been found to help stimulate the production of mucus in the stomach, which coats ulcers and promotes healing. Reducing stomach acidity and protecting ulcers from exposure to the acid is of paramount importance when trying to effect healing.
How To Make Clove Tea
In a pot with boiling water, add a small amount of dried clove leaves that have been ground, about 1 tablespoon should be enough. Add the ground cloves to the pot and allow to steep in the hot water for 20 to 30 minutes. Strain, add cinnamon or ginger if necessary to enhance its flavor – or a small amount of honey, and you have a very strong concoction of clove tea ready for your consumption.
Conclusion
Without a doubt you can now see how useful clove tea can be to your overall health, and as something which has been used for centuries, you can rest assured that in small amounts it is absolutely fine.
[james]https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/benefits-of-cloves
https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-251/clove
https://www.drugs.com/mtm/clove.html[/james]
