Rosehip tea: benefits, harms and amazing properties

Rose hips in Rus­sia have a beau­ti­ful poet­ic name — “orange of the North”. This is because the con­tent of vit­a­min C in berries is very high. How use­ful are these afford­able and fra­grant berries? How to make a deli­cious tea with immune-pro­tec­tive prop­er­ties from them? Tells Med­AboutMe.

The history of the appearance of wild rose in nutrition

The moun­tain slopes of Iran and the Himalayas are con­sid­ered to be the birth­place of wild rose. But the plant has tak­en root per­fect­ly in many parts of the world. It is known that it was used for med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es in ancient Greece and Rome. Both the famous sci­en­tist and the doc­tor men­tioned the mirac­u­lous prop­er­ties of the wild rose. Avi­cen­na.

In ancient Rus’, wild rose was high­ly val­ued. Entire expe­di­tions were sent behind him. Russ­ian heal­ers pre­pared from the fruits, leaves and flow­ers of the plant a paste for heal­ing wounds and a healthy tea to main­tain the strength and health of sol­diers. It is inter­est­ing that in Rus­sia, out of 500 vari­eties of wild rose known to sci­en­tists, about a hun­dred grow.

How rose hips can enrich the body

Rose­hip has long been used as a vit­a­min rem­e­dy. In Rus’, tea was brewed from its fruits, and sweet jam was pre­pared from the leaves of the plant.

Accord­ing to sci­en­tists, rose hips con­tain almost 50 times more vit­a­min C than lemons. More­over, the most valu­able sources of “ascor­bic acid” are white-flow­ered and red-flow­ered vari­eties of the plant.

Rose hips are also famous for their high con­tent of organ­ic acids, sucrose, pectins and flavonoids. Vit­a­mins C, P, A, B2, K, E and min­er­als potas­si­um, cal­ci­um, iron, cop­per, chromi­um, mag­ne­sium and man­ganese are present in the berries. At the same time, the calo­rie con­tent of rose hips is low — in 100 g there are only 109 kcal.

What are the benefits of rose hips for health

Rose­hip tea is a deli­cious and fra­grant drink that has a del­i­cate flo­ral taste with a slight­ly sweet, slight­ly sug­ary after­taste. It is not brewed like ordi­nary tea — its prepa­ra­tion takes time. But there are a lot of ben­e­fits in such a drink.

1. Enriches the body with antioxidants

Rose hips are loaded with antiox­i­dants, which can help pro­tect the body from free rad­i­cal dam­age. The con­tent of antiox­i­dants in dried fruits is low­er than in fresh berries. There­fore, it is bet­ter to pre­pare tea from fresh fruits. They pro­vide the body with vit­a­mins C and E, carotenoids and polyphe­nols.

2. Strengthens the immune system

Due to the high con­tent of vit­a­min C, rose­hip tea is rec­om­mend­ed for drink­ing dur­ing the cold sea­son and for restor­ing the body after pro­tract­ed ill­ness­es.

Vit­a­min C con­tributes to an increase in white blood cells in the body, which pro­tect it from infec­tion, as well as to enhance the func­tions of lym­pho­cytes and main­tain a pro­tec­tive bar­ri­er. This vit­a­min, along with oth­ers found in rose hips, helps boost the immune sys­tem.

3. Prevents heart disease

Rose hips are rich in flavonoids. Stud­ies show that these antiox­i­dants reduce high blood pres­sure in peo­ple with hyper­ten­sion and improve blood flow to the heart.

One study, which last­ed for six weeks, showed that peo­ple who reg­u­lar­ly drank rose­hip tea (con­tain­ing at least 40 grams of fruit per day) sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved their blood pres­sure and low­ered the lev­el of “bad” cho­les­terol in the blood. All this is good for heart health and can pre­vent many of the com­mon dis­eases.

4. Effective in weight loss

Rose hips con­tain the antiox­i­dant tiliro­side, which has “fat-burn­ing” prop­er­ties. In a 2015 study, sci­en­tists found a direct link between tea con­sump­tion from the fruit of the plant and weight loss in humans. The exper­i­ment involved 32 over­weight adults who received 100 mg of rose­hip extract dai­ly.

Despite such impres­sive results, rose­hip extract can­not be the only “weight loss mea­sure” — you need to strive to lead a healthy lifestyle and move more.

5. May Reduce Inflammation and Pain

Rose­hip tea is use­ful to include in the diet of those who suf­fer from chron­ic pain caused by inflam­ma­tion in the body. So, in one four-month study involv­ing 100 peo­ple diag­nosed with arthri­tis, it turned out that those who took 5 g of rose­hip extract per day noticed a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in pain and an increase in hip joint mobil­i­ty.

There­fore, rose­hip tea can be rec­om­mend­ed for peo­ple suf­fer­ing from arthri­tis. How­ev­er, sci­en­tists still note that encour­ag­ing results are char­ac­ter­is­tic of the plant extract, and not tea.

6. Maintains youthful and healthy skin

Inter­est­ing results of the study were pub­lished in 2015. Sci­en­tists sug­gest­ed that peo­ple take 3 g of rose­hip pow­der per day for 8 weeks. At the end of the exper­i­ment, they noticed that those who did it reg­u­lar­ly had less “crow’s feet” on their faces, and the skin itself became more elas­tic and its lev­el of hydra­tion increased.

Sci­en­tists explain this by the fact that rose hips con­tain a lot of vit­a­min C, which stim­u­lates col­la­gen syn­the­sis and pro­tects skin cells from dam­age from sun­light. In addi­tion, they include the carotenoid astax­an­thin, which has anti-aging prop­er­ties. There­fore, rose­hip tea can be safe­ly called the elixir of youth. But it is worth not­ing that it is not suit­able for every­one.

Who is contraindicated tea from rose hips

Sci­en­tists claim that rose­hip tea does not cause any side effects in most healthy peo­ple. How­ev­er, some peo­ple should give up on the idea of ​​brew­ing it.

The safe­ty and effec­tive­ness of tea has not been stud­ied in preg­nant or breast­feed­ing women. There­fore, before intro­duc­ing tea into the diet, you should con­sult your doc­tor.

In addi­tion, due to the high con­tent of vit­a­min C, tea is not rec­om­mend­ed for peo­ple with kid­ney patholo­gies, as it increas­es the risk of kid­ney stones in some peo­ple.

How to make delicious and fragrant tea

Tasty and fra­grant tea can be obtained from both fresh rose hips and dried ones. Recipes for this will vary.

Recipe 1: Fresh Rosehip Tea

Rinse the rose hips and cut each one in half. Clean the halves, remov­ing rough fibers from them. Mash the pre­pared berries into a pulp and put in a teapot at the rate of 5 tea­spoons of raw mate­ri­als per 1 liter of water. Pour the fruits with boil­ing water and let them brew for 40 min­utes, strain the infu­sion through cheese­cloth. Tea is ready.

If it is too tart, it can be thinned with water. Add hon­ey or sug­ar if desired.

Recipe 2: Dried Rosehip Tea

Take 10–15 rose hips, wash them well under run­ning water. Fold in a plas­tic bag and break each berry with a ham­mer with­out remov­ing it from the bag. Trans­fer the pre­pared raw mate­ri­als to a ther­mos with a vol­ume of 3 liters.

Boil 3 liters of boil­ing water and pour them into a ther­mos. Add half a cup of sug­ar if desired. After 2–3 hours, the tea will be ready, but the most deli­cious is the drink that was brewed in the evening the next morn­ing.

Shut­ter­stock pho­to mate­ri­als used