Posted by Larry Hoover on November 25, 2003, at 7:08:55
In reply to Blueberry leaf, posted by Civ on November 24, 2003, at 13:36:54
> I have read of the benefits of blueberry leaf extract. Are the same benefits present with blueberry leaf tea?
Much weaker benefits, but there would be some.
Water is a good solvent for many things, and hot water is better than cold (that's why we heat water for tea and coffee). A lot of the good things (from a medical/treatment perspective) that are in plant materials are not readily soluble in water, however.
A lot of the time, when you buy a standardized extract of some herb, the "good stuff" has been dissolved out of the parent plant material by solvents other than water. Then the solvent is removed, leaving the good stuff in semi-purified form. Then the extract is added back with some of the original material (that's what's usually done with St. John's wort, for example), or it's mixed with fillers and made into a capsule or pill.
Extracts, then, give a concentrated form of an herb that may not be possible to obtain from simple water extraction, as in making tea. Sometimes that's a good thing. There is enough caffeine in a single regular tea bag to kill you.
There is certain terminology that goes along with studying herbs....a tincture is an alcohol extract, for example. It will dissolve a different group of substances (and in different proportions) than might water, for example.
Too much information...
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:283243
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20031122/msgs/283529.html