Homemade Tea for Colds

Sipping on medicinal herbal tea is one of the best steps you can take to shorten the duration of an upper respiratory infection.

Reader Contribution by Kathleen Jade
Updated on September 6, 2023
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by Adobestock/Uuganbayar

When we’re suffering from a bad cold, nothing makes us feel like we’re taking care of ourselves more than a steaming cup of herbal tea, particularly if it contains medicinal herbs. Sipping on medicinal herbal tea is one of the best steps you can take to shorten the duration of illness when the symptoms of a cold, sore throat, or other upper respiratory infection begin.

Fortunately, medicinal tea for colds is widely available these days. We don’t even need to live near a health food store–many supermarkets and drugstores now sell herbal blends formulated to treat a variety of conditions, including tea for colds, sore throats, coughs, and general immune support. However, while these pre-blended teas, generally sold in tea bags, often contain at least a couple of herbs with known medicinal properties, the medicinal herbs are not always in high enough quantities to have much impact. Furthermore, when medicinal tea ingredients are blended together in tea bags, they can’t be properly infused or decocted to optimally extract the active constituents.

A much better option is to make your own tea for colds by using one of the following herbal tea recipes and using the correct infusion and decoction techniques for the specific herbs in your tea.

What Are Medicinal Infusions and Decoctions?

Tea is the most common type of herbal extract–it is essentially a water-based herbal extract. Making tea is one of simplest ways to separate the active, healing herb constituents from the inactive, fibrous matter. There are two basic ways to prepare medicinal tea: infusion and decoction. Broadly speaking, an infusion is made by combining hot water with medicinal herbs and steeping to extract their active ingredients. A decoction, meanwhile, is made by adding the ingredients to boiling water and simmering them.

Which method to use depends mostly on the herb itself (for example, chamomile or licorice) and the part of it being used (for example, flower or root, respectively). Although there are exceptions, the basic rule of thumb is that infusions are used for delicate and less dense parts of plants such as flowers, leaves, and green stems. Decoctions are used to prepare tea from hard and woody plant material such as roots, barks, and some seeds and hard fruits.

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