A cup of Brazilian mint tea relieves pain as well as aspirin, but without the harmful side effects

Saturday, November 28, 2009 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: mint tea, pain relief, health news

(NaturalNews) Researchers from Newcastle University have scientifically proven that Hyptis crenata, also known as Brazilian mint, is a powerful pain reliever that works just as well as Indometacin, a synthetic drug similar to aspirin. A traditional remedy for treating the flu, stomach problems, high fevers, and headaches, Brazilian mint was found to be extremely powerful and safe.

The team, led by Graciela Rocha, set out to perform the study using the traditional preparation of the herb. Surveys were conducted in Brazil to figure out exactly how this was done and how much should be consumed in order to achieve beneficial results. The preparation the team ended up using consisted of the herb's dried leaves being steeped in boiling water for 30 minutes. Once cool, the tea was consumed in the same way as any other brewed tea would be. The results indicated efficacy in a wide range of ailments.

Graciela emphasized the fact that more than 50,000 plants worldwide are used for some type of medicinal purpose and that researchers should focus on identifying these types of plants and testing their efficacy. Since more than half of all prescription drugs are derived from plant compounds, it is a worthy effort to study plant medicines in their natural, safe forms.

Findings were put forward at the 2nd International Symposium on Medicinal and Nutraceutical Plants in New Delhi, India and are set to be published in the society's journal Acta Horticulturae. Clinical trials are the next step for the group who hopes to discover not only the various effective dose levels for various pains and illnesses but also the specific characteristics of the herb that make it so advantageous.

Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

Living in South America, I find myself surrounded by abundant natural medicine. I can't walk fifty feet out my front door without discovering medicinal plants.

South America is an undiscovered medicine chest that continues to remain largely ignored by western nations. Ecuador, for example, offers seemingly countless medicinal plants that have yet to be properly studied and understood. Brazil, meanwhile, is a huge, incredibly biodiverse nation with a rich collection of undiscovered medicinal plants that very quite literally save the western world from chronic disease.

In Ecuador, I recently took a weekend trip and harvested fresh Sangre de Drago from the trees found in the local rainforests. We also harvested tres filos herb from the local hillsides, and we even found some amazing guayusa herb leaves that we harvested to make some invigorating tea. In these three herbs alone, thousands of medicinal compounds exist. Most are entirely unknown by western science, but they were well understood in function by the South American Indians who inhabited regions throughout South American which now include Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia and several others.

Sources for this story include:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-...