Raspberry tea benefits

Raspberry tea is sweet and packed with antioxidants.

Raspberry tea may consist of the fruit or dried leaves of the raspberry plant. Raspberry iced tea, a popular and refreshing summer beverage, is made by adding fresh raspberry juice or extract to black tea and serving it with ice. Raspberry leaf tea is bitterer and does not taste like raspberries. Both types of tea are beneficial; iced tea offers a wide array of antioxidant vitamins, while raspberry leaf tea is touted as a natural remedy and relaxant agent.

Raspberry Fruit Tea

Black tea may be good for your heart, according to Joseph Vita, M.D., of the Boston University School of Medicine. Vita conducted a study cited by the American Heart Association that found that black tea contains flavonoids, plant compounds that behave as antioxidants, which prevent the formation of plaque in artery walls. Adding raspberries to it can boost your tea's antioxidant properties, with each cup of raspberries providing 32 milligrams of vitamin C and 10 percent of your recommended daily intake for zinc and vitamin E.

Raspberry Leaf Tea During Labor

Since at least the 1500s, people have believed that raspberry leaf tea may make labor and childbirth easier. In 1970, a group of London pharmacologists published a study in the "British Journal of Pharmacology" after testing raspberry leaf extract on pregnant rats and finding that it did appear to inhibit contractions. They concluded that raspberry leaf tea may be useful for modifying contractions during labor.

Relaxant Activity

According to researchers who published a study in the journal "Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Medicine" in 2002, people have used raspberry leaf tea for centuries to treat wounds, diarrhea and colic pain. To test the validity of these folk remedies, the researchers observed the relaxant activity of dried raspberry leaves prepared with a variety of solvents. They found that at least two components of raspberry leaf extract exhibit relaxant activity in an in vitro gastrointestinal preparation, so it may be useful for some of these ailments.