Category Archives: Health giving drinks

Drinks made from natural herbs and fruits which have health giving properties and taste good too.

Apple Cider Vinegar Benefits

Apple cider vinegar is a fantastic naturally produced material which gives many health benefits.  Apple cider vinegar benefits include dealing with acne and controlling diabetes. You may come across it called simply cider vinegar.

The health of people can be made a lot better when they use apple cider vinegar. If you want to drink cider vinegar you should always dilute it first. This is so that strong raw vinegar doesn’t affect the teeth or throat. It has been found that if you have an apple cider vinegar diet it will give you apple cider vinegar weight loss.

You can use apple cider vinegar for skin and apple cider vinegar for hair. It can be used as a skin toner and will get rid of dandruff in a natural way. Drinking apple cider vinegar and honey is a good cure for the common cold. There are many other apple cider vinegar cures. Raw apple cider vinegar is the best to use and you can easily get this from fruit farms and the like. You need to make sure that it hasn’t been heat treated as this can destroy the valuable vinegar mother which also has many health giving properties.

To find out more about this wonderful liquid and how apple cider vinegar benefits can improve your health you should go to Apple Cider Vinegar

Spinach Green Smoothie

We all know how good spinach is for us, but how many people actually eat it on a regular basis? It isn’t really the kind of vegetable that you would have on its own. It is more than likely that you would include a little of it within something else like a pie, soup or omelet.  The other thing about spinach is that by cooking it you destroy a lot of the valuable nutrients that you are trying to get. The best way to get the most out of your spinach is to have it raw. You could have a salad with spinach but how much of this healthy stuff could you eat? The truth is that most of us would only be able to eat a small amount of spinach this way.  You would soon get bored of it, especially if you had spinach salad meal after meal. One of the easiest ways to get all these nutrients in a tasty way is to make a spinach green smoothie.

 

spinach green smoothie
You can serve up a nice looking green smoothie

The thought of a spinach green smoothie might not sound that appetizing, but that is exactly what they can be. For a start of, a spinach green smoothie isn’t just made up of spinach. The reality is that green smoothies are made up mainly of fruit. The correct proportions for a green smoothie are 60% fruit and 40% green leaves. This means that it will mainly taste of fruit. This makes green smoothies a far more pleasant affair. Basically, the fruit of choice and the spinach is thrown into a blender and the whole thing whizzed up. Here is an example of a spinach green smoothie recipe.

 

1 handful spinach

1 pint strawberries

3 small peaches

2 cups water

 

This smoothie will taste of strawberries and peaches and will be very tasty indeed. However, as well as getting all of this fruit towards your five a day you will also be getting all of the nutrients from the raw spinach as well. It is thought that raw greens provide far more essential dietary elements such a raw amino acids, antioxidants and vitamins than even fruit. These will all go towards protecting your body against diseases such as cancer as well as providing valuable plant roughage as well. A spinach green smoothie can also be very helpful as part of a weight reducing diet. In fact green smoothies can even be used as complete meal substitutes when dieting.

 

spinach green smoothie after whizzing up
The spinach green smoothie after whizzing up

One sure thing is that, a spinach green smoothie is also healthy for the reason of the things that are left out of it. There are none of the artificial flavours, additives, trans-saturated fats, cholesterol and refined sugars that you find in modern processed foods. All of these things can cause havoc with your body, giving rise to conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. If you want to find out about over 200 more green smoothie recipes go to Green Smoothie Recipes.

Rooibos Tea and Health for Everyone

Rooibos is sold in the form of a tea which you can often find in your supermarket. It is marketed because of certain health giving properties that it has. Rooibos tea comes from a plant that is grown in South Africa. In actual fact the name comes from an Afrikaan word that means ‘Red Bush’. As a result you may find that it is called ‘Red Bush’ or even just ‘Red Tea’. You can buy the tea loose or in convenient tea bag form. These days many people are interested in Rooibos tea and health.

 

Rooibos loose tea
This is what the tea leaves look like when they are ready for packing

The bush that the tea is made from only grows in the mountains high above Cape Town. Initially it was the native people of these areas that picked the leaves from wild bushes, prepared them and used them. They seemed to gain a lot from drinking the tea in terms of their health. The settlers from the West soon recognized that the local indigenous people were able to treat such conditions as indigestion, allergies, anxiety and skin ailments like eczema with the tea that they produced from the leaves. As a result, the colonial South Africans started to grow the bushes in plantations. Initially this was for their own use but soon it was being exported all over the world. Many people now drink Rooibos tea for health.

 

Despite being called tea the Rooibos plant isn’t related to normal tea plants at all. As a result the leaves of the Rooibos bush, that are used to make the tea, don’t contain the same profile of chemical substances. This means, in particular, that they don’t contain caffeine and tannins. Once the leaves have been picked they are bruised and then left on a concrete floor to ferment in a similar way to other teas. During this process substances within the leaves become oxidized and this results in them turning from their natural green color to red. It is this change in color that has resulted in it being called ‘Red Bush’.

 

The tea itself tastes like an ordinary Indian or China tea. It certainly hasn’t got an overpowering taste like some herbal teas. It also has a natural sweet flavor which means that you don’t have to add sugar to it. This is an advantage for people on diets or trying to avoid tooth cavities. It has a warm aromatic flavor with a hint of vanilla and as a result it is very pleasant to drink. Another positive to this tea is that potentially you can drink as much as you like, without getting all the side effects that normal tea would give you. This is because Rooibos contains no caffeine or tannins. After a few cups of ordinary tea you can feel the caffeine causing your pulse to race and sometimes headaches to occur. I personally drink lots of Rooibos every day instead of coffee or ordinary tea. This is due to the fact that I have a heart condition and take pills to slow my heart down. I find that if I drink tea with caffeine in it I can quickly feel that I am getting into trouble with my heart problem. I find the taste so pleasing that I don’t add sugar or milk. There is no need to add anything. Rooibos is completely safe and this means that anybody can enjoy the tea, from children to the elderly.

 

Rooibos tea bag brewing
Tea bags are the easiest way to use Rooibos tea

One of the biggest reasons to drink Rooibos is the fact that it contains huge quantities of antioxidants. These antioxidants are the substances that allow you to fight such diseases as cancer. They do this by helping to purify the body by dealing with the many toxic poll

utants that get into it every day. These pollutants can cause cancer to develop and also genetic damage which can lead to premature aging. These are just a few things that this wonderful tea can do to help our bodies to stay healthy and young looking. Click the link to find out further information on Rooibos tea and how it can benefit you.