Health Benefits of Chamomile Tea

Chamomile tea is a popular bedtime drink, due to its mild relaxing effects and caffeine-free nature. This article explores some of the numerous health benefits of chamomile tea, and also a few cautionary points.

Chamomile tea is a caffeine-free herbal tea and popular bedtime drink, tea widely consumed in western countries. Chamomile's role as a bedtime tea is due largely to its mild relaxing effect: the herb acts as a mild relaxant without acting as a strong sedative. However, chamomile tea has a number of potent and less well-known health benefits. Chamomile is not just a popular herbal tea, but it is also a powerful medicine with the potential to treat or prevent a number of medical conditions, not the least of which is type II diabetes.

Chamomile tea is widely available as a pure herbal tea, but chamomile is also a common ingredient in herbal blends, both as a base or primary herb, and as a background ingredient. Chamomile has a distinctive aroma which is often described as slightly fruity; chamomile tea is smooth but can have a somewhat bitter aftertaste; for this reason it is sometimes sweetened with honey.

The health benefits of chamomile tea:

1. Relaxation: The benefits of chamomile in terms of relaxation have long been common knowledge, but only recently have these effects begun to be studied and understood scientifically. A control study compared chamomile tea to hot water (as drinking hot water alone is known to have a mild relaxing effect), and studied physiological indicators of relaxation, including heart rate and skin temperature, and found that chamomile tea produced a statistically-significant stronger relaxing effect than the hot water, thus lending credibility to the use of this herb for its relaxing properties.

2. Lowering blood sugar and other anti-diabetic benefits: A more recent study explored the effect of chamomile on blood sugar, and found that chamomile has a measurable effect of lowering blood sugar. The authors of this study concluded that chamomile tea might be beneficial to consume for people suffering from type II diabetes, or from pre-diabetic individuals at high risk of developing this condition.

3. Other health benefits and medicinal uses of chamomile: Like many herbal teas, chamomile tea is known to be rich in antioxidants. Chamomile also has antimicrobial effects. There is also some evidence of other health benefits, including the lowering of cholesterol, the reduction of anxiety, and antimutagenic protection. Chamomile may also act as an antispasmodic.

Side-effects, interactions, risks, and points of caution:

Although it is quite rare, there have been documented cases of allergic reaction to chamomile, including severe reactions. These can be due to cross-reactivity with other closely-related plants. Chamomile is in the composite family, the same family which contains daisies, asters, and a number of flowers that commonly provoke allergic reactions, such as ragweed and mugwort. Although many people with allergies to these plants can safely consume chamomile tea, people with or at risk of severe allergic reactions to plants in this family should exercise great caution with any chamomile products.

Outside of the allergic reaction, the most serious side-effect of chamomile is its activity as a blood thinner (anticoagulant), due to the fact that it contains the chemical coumarin. High concentrations of coumarin can be dangerous, and coumarin is also known to interact in potentially life-threatening ways with other blood thinners, such as the prescription drug warfarin. Chamomile tea should be consumed with caution in people for whom blood thinners are contraindicated.

In summary:

Chamomile tea is more than just a relaxing beverage: it is a potent medicine with a number of effects on health. For most people, chamomile is safe to consume regularly, but there are a few points of caution, surrounding allergies and chamomile's activity as a blood thinner. For those for whom it is safe to regularly drink, chamomile tea provides a number of health benefits, including relaxation, and protection against high blood sugar and type I diabetes, and a number of other health benefits.

Alex Zorach is the creator of RateTea, an interactive website where anyone can rate and review teas and herbal teas. You can visit RateTea's page on chamomile tea to find further information about this herb, including listings and reviews of different sources of buying chamomile, and citations to the scientific studies discussed in this article.