From Taste to Medicine: How I Learned What Tea Really Does for the Body
I didn’t grow up drinking tea.
To be fair, I didn’t grow up drinking coffee either.
Tea, to me, was always that plain little bag of Earl Grey that tasted, fine, but didn’t really do anything. It felt more like a polite habit than a something that would nourish your body.
That all changed when I lived in Thailand.
One day someone handed me a cup of jasmine tea with a splash of milk, and I was hooked. It was floral, comforting, almost dreamy. Ha, I still remember where I was when I had that cup of tea. It opened me up to an entirely new world of tea. At that point in my life, though, I was drinking tea simply because I liked the taste, not because I understood the medicinal power behind it.
Now?
Tea is more than taste.
It’s nourishment.
It’s support.
It’s medicine.
It’s one of the ways I help my body calm down, rest deeper, fight off illness, or simply when I need a pick me up when feeling stressed. But that leads to an important question:
How do you know if a tea is actually helping your body?
Here’s the truth that changed everything for me:
Whether a tea “works” comes down to two things:
How often you’re drinking it
How much herb you’re actually using
For years I assumed a packet of “Sleepy Time Tea” would knock me out if I needed rest. But guess what? It actually takes about three sachets to reach a medicinal dose.
Most tea drinkers, including me at one point, are unintentionally brewing their herbs far too weak to feel any real therapeutic effect. One tiny tea bag might be lovely for the flavor, but it is rarely enough for true herbal medicine.
So let’s talk about what your body really needs.
Medicinal Teas Follow an Ancient Dosage Standard
Medicinal teas are not the same as grocery-store sipping teas. Herbalists have used a specific, therapeutic ratio for centuries:
A true medicinal serving = 1/4 ounce (7 grams) of dried herbs per 1 cup of hot water.
Anything significantly less than that becomes more of a comfort tea than a healing one.
Why does that amount matter? Because 7 grams is the amount needed to extract the compounds that actually help the body:
minerals
flavonoids
nervine compounds
anti-inflammatory constituents
sleep-inducing aromatic oils
hormone-supportive phytochemicals
A regular tea bag holds just 1–2 grams. So you’d need: 3 small tea bags = 1 medicinal-strength cup.
This surprises almost everyone, but it’s the missing link between:
“I’m drinking herbal tea.” and “I’m actually feeling better.”
This is why many people think herbs are “too gentle” or “don’t work.”
They’re not weak — they’re just under-dosed.
Herbal tea isn’t meant to hit your system like caffeine or a pharmaceutical. It builds, layer by layer, cup by cup.
If you want wellness benefits you can truly feel, aim for:
1–3 cups a day, depending on the herb
Consistent daily use for at least a week
Longer steep times — 20–30 minutes for leaves and flowers
This is where the difference of feeling better and seeing the changes happens.
At Boundless Sol, every tea we offer is chosen with intention to support the body, not just offer flavor.
Our Blues Tea blends nettle, St. John’s Wort, spearmint, damiana, and valerian root to gently support emotional balance and uplift the mood.
Our Sleepy Garden Tea brings together chamomile, peppermint, spearmint, lavender, lemon verbena, and rose for deep rest and peaceful sleep. Peace Tea uses chamomile, spearmint, lavender, cassia cinnamon bark, passionflower, and rose petals to calm the nervous system and soften stress. Our Immune Guard Tea offers seasonal strength with raspberry leaf, nettle, lemon balm, elderberries, echinacea, rose hips, graperoot, lemon, lemon verbena, and ginger. And for nursing mothers, our Mother Nursing Tea blends rooibos, raspberry leaf, lemon balm, fenugreek, fennel, alfalfa, marshmallow root, rosehips, and anise seed to gently support milk flow and nourishment.
These are purposeful teas made for real support. If you’re drinking tea for healing, it should actually help you heal.
I’ve come to realize that medicinal teas really do work — you just need the right dose and the right frequency to truly support your body. Back then, while I was sipping that jasmine tea in Thailand, I had no idea how it was quietly calming my nervous system and nourishing me from the inside out.
Now I understand the purpose behind every cup. With the right herbs, brewed the right way, tea becomes more than a drink.
It becomes medicine.
To learn more about our medicinal teas click here.
How to Brew a Medicinal Cup (Quick Guide)
Use:
7 grams (1/4 ounce) of dried herbs
Steep:
8–12 oz hot water for 20–30 minutes, covered (to trap medicinal volatile oils).
Finish:
Sweeten with raw honey if desired
For nutritive herbs: Steep overnight for maximum extraction