After initially looking at what rooibos tea is, we are now looking at the rooibos tea benefits.

I like to think of herbal teas, like rooibos, as teas that are used for a very specific purpose.  As we saw with hibiscus tea, which was mainly to benefit your heart, rooibos seems to be mainly for the nervous system and for your body as a whole.  I am sure that once you see what the benefits are that you will start to see a pattern.

Like many other teas, rooibos tea is high in antioxidants, and like many other herbal teas, it is caffeine-free.  There has also been research that in some cases it was found that the green rooibos tea had higher antioxidant levels as compared to the fully oxidized rooibos, but these findings have not been entirely consistent.

Rooibos tea has lower tannin levels as compared to black tea or a green tea that is unoxidized.  Since it has lower tannin levels it still allows your body to absorb iron and proteins.

Rooibos tea also contains catechins in the forms of flavanols, flavones, flavanones, and dihydrochalcones.  These are all beneficial antioxidants.

Traditional Uses in South Africa

In South Africa they mainly use rooibos tea for its reported uses to alleviate infantile colic, and its fight against allergies, asthma, and skin problems.  To me it seems like the health benefits of rooibos tea are showing that it helps to calm the body, or nervous system.

Additional Rooibos Tea Health Benefits

And lastly, looking at the remaining benefits of rooibos tea we see that rooibos tea is beneficial in helping people who suffer from irritability, constant headaches, mild forms of depression, and high blood pressure.

Rooibos tea also helps to relieve nausea, vomiting, acid indigestion, stomach ulcers, and constipation.

From these additional rooibos tea health benefits I am starting to see a pattern that rooibos tea possibly helps to calm the nervous system, fighting against nausea, relaxing the body and helping to reduce problems that come from the body being tense.

So you can see how rooibos tea has a specific purpose that is characteristic of an herbal tea.  If you suffer from any of those problems that I have stated above you may want to try some rooibos tea and see if it works for you.  Give it a week and drink a cup every day and see if you notice any changes.  There are no adverse effects from drinking rooibos tea so try it out.  You may like it.

And if you are still searching around looking for a tea that works for you, make sure you check out the other benefits of tea here at Tea on Earth.  I am trying to give you all of the best information that I can find in one place.  Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions, please leave a comment below or send me an email!

The more and more I do research on tea, the more and more I find out just how big the industry is.  It is pretty amazing how deep you can go in finding everything from different types of true teas to different applications for herbal teas.

As I said in the introductory article on herbal tea, herbal tea is characterized by the use of flowers, dried fruits, seeds, roots, bark, and then those taken and added to boiling water.  Therefore, many variations of ingredients could be used that can extract different flavors making the possibilities almost endless.  Over the years there have been some popular herbal teas that have emerged around the world.

What is Rooibos Tea

One of those teas is the rooibos tea, also known as red tea.  Rooibos tea comes from the Calicotome Villosa plant and it is only grown in the Western Cape province of South Africa.  It is an herbal tea because it is taken from a different plant than from where all true tea comes from.

The plant that rooibos tea comes from is a wispy, linear plant, long strands of stems and has pointed leaves like a needle.

These leaves are oxidized to give it a reddish-brown color, but there are other variations that consider it to be a green rooibos – it all depends on the oxidation.

Rooibos tea is prepared in a similar way like black tea where it is often prepared with added flavors.  The most popular way to prepare rooibos tea is to add milk and sugar, but in some parts of the world they substitute that out for lemon and honey.

A growing popularity to rooibos is preparing it in a way to satisfy coffee lovers.  South Africa has started to use it in espressos and have also started to transition into using it in cappuccinos and lattes.

I don’t have any experience with rooibos tea, but it sounds like it would be an interesting experience.  I am curious to try it.  Being able to drink it in a coffee form is something I haven’t heard of in any other variation of tea.

I think it would be really cool to actually go to South Africa and try it locally.  Sometimes when stuff like this gets exported it becomes commercialized and does not taste the same so to be able to try it fresh right from where it is grown would be a great experience.

At least it’s something to think about for the future!

If you have anything to add to this, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Here at Tea on Earth I am attempting to bring you as much information about tea as I can so that you can enjoy it just as much as I do.  Please continue to look around.  You never know what you may find!