I have always liked herbal teas. I think it is because they remind me of my grandmother. I remember when I was a little kid and we went over to her house every weekend. We would sit there and drink Herb tea for hours on end. She loved herbal tea, and had every flavor you could imagine. She had Jasmine, peppermint, rose hips – you name it and she had. She would even mix up her own herbal teas out of various herbal extracts that she had. I can remember like it was yesterday, how nice it was to sit there and just sip tea with her all afternoon long.
When she passed away, I forgot about herbal tea for a while. My family did not drink herbal teas on its own. We were quite a coffee drinking family, you see. I think it was a difference of generations – my grandmother's generation liked to take things a little bit slower than my parents did. My parents had herbal teas everyone so often on the weekend, but in general they were so hooked on caffeine that they couldn't go a day without coffee. They would have coffee in the morning, noon, and night.
I wouldn't have rediscovered the benefits of herbal tea if I hadn't had some serious stomach problems. I developed an ulcer, you see, and for several weeks almost everything irritated my stomach. I started taking herbal teas because I knew that they could help me out. Less people know about it nowadays, but both ginseng and peppermint – common ingredients in herbal teas – are great for the stomach and the digestive system as a whole. They will soothe an upset stomach, make the pain go away, and in general make you feel better. Herbal teas were very good to me. They were the whole reason I made it through that illness without any really serious problems.
Unfortunately, having the ulcer ruined my taste for coffee. You see, the highly caffeinated drink would irritate my stomach like nothing else. Unlike the soothing herbal teas that I replaced it with, coffee gave me heartburn. When my stomach was better again, I still associated the coffee with the feeling of heartburn, so I cannot drink it. My parents think of it as a loss – they can't understand anyone not liking coffee. To me, however, it is not a loss. Since I switched to herbal teas, I am much more relaxed than I used to be before I was a tea drinker.
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