Tea and illness 2: masala chai and chen pi

I'm sick again!  The short version:  I drank a lot of tisanes when I was sick recently, and trying out variations of masala chai worked a lot better this time than any single tisane or mix of those had then.  A chen pi (shu pu'er stuffed tangerine / orange) didn't seem to have much effect.

I probably pushed it related to getting back out running in moderately bad pollution within a week of recovering from that last sinus infection.  The levels had spiked to quite severe a day before the last run and partial clearing of that smog probably wasn't enough.

at the worst; I ran when the text balloons were yellow and orange

A doctor said that I'm fine, that I just need to drink fluids, rest, and wait it out.  I think this pollution may be too much for us, since my wife and kids have been sick too.  We've been using air purifiers at home, so we get a great break from it at least one third of the day, or more than half if we're around the house a lot past sleeping, but apparently it's not enough. 

We have masks to wear.  They're the special versions that filter a lot better than the green or white ones you can pick up in a hospital, surgical masks, but it just doesn't work to live in those.  It seems like your body can handle a moderate degree of pollution well enough, until it can't, and then you become much more sensitive to it.

back in February, the last pollution spike

The tisanes I wrote about drinking in an earlier post didn't seem to help in any medicinal sense, but it had been nice drinking a lot of hot beverages, and going easy on caffeine.  I speculated that masala chai blends, maybe even made with tisanes instead, might work even better, but I felt a bit wiped out to spend 20 minutes mixing inputs and simmering tea during that first round of illness.  So I tried it this time.

It seemed to actually help.  On the third day or so--hard to pin down the exact day you get sick, since you can just feel a bit off at first--I prepared masala chai, Indian spiced black tea, made with half black tea and half willow herb (aka fireweed / Ivan Chay).  For spicing I used clove, cardamom, cinnamon, and nutmeg, not exactly typical but it sounded good.  Drinking two large mugs of that, prepared with sugar and milk, brought on a heavy sweat, and I seemed to feel better related to illness symptoms within an hour.  I drank a second round with lunch hours later, adding ginger and fennel seed to that blend, and again sweated quite a bit.  Within those hours the output from blowing my nose ran much clearer.

Still, could be a coincidence.  I hadn't eaten much at all the day prior so I was wondering if the spicing wouldn't be a bit much for my stomach, but it wasn't.  The next morning I made another batch, and went a little heavy on the dash of salt I usually add, throwing off results a little, but then my sense of taste isn't great anyway.

Chen pi

Being a little tired of masala chai I tried brewing a shu stuffed orange / tangerine with a lunch.  I couldn't read any of the label but it was clearly shu, not a variation made with black or white tea.  One of the vendors in that Shenzhen tea market threw three of those in with what we bought and I'd not tried one yet.

before tearing up the peel a bit

As to approach I brewed it in a tea bottle.  With my sense of taste still on the limited side a flavor-list theme review wouldn't work, and optimizing that never was the point.  It tastes like citrus and shu.  At a guess the flavor would be positive if I wasn't sick, but it's hard to be sure with blocked sinuses.  The second round was brewed for a long time (I wasn't really controlling proportion or timing), ending up tasting nice enough but a little metallic.  Water might potentially taste metallic now, since beyond the illness more or less plugging my nose other symptoms do apply. 

I'm not even sure if the traditional Chinese wisdom / medicine claims say dried (and aged?) orange peel cures sinus infections, or colds, or whatever else.  It's said to have some medicinal properties, I thought, but most likely the list that turns up in discussions and marketing content is broad.  Why wouldn't it be, regardless of the truth of the matter?  Personal effects probably do vary anyway, and there is no simple, singular truth of the matter.


Back to the masala chai instead, there seems to be a lot of potential in using modified spiced tea blends for the same purpose.  Sage and black tea sounds like a potential contrast in character but mixing in a bit of rosemary, or whatever else, and shifting the masala blend part to match might work.  Adding some citrus might be good, since shifting off the original flavor profile would be the point anyway.  It's hard to get that warm, earthy character back though, without black tea, which really ties masala chai together.  I don't completely avoid tea or caffeine when I'm sick, I just try to moderate it, since it doesn't pair well with lying around.

This part is more about talking crazy than a real suggestion, but tied to making roasted pumpkin recently toasting the seeds to a medium brown then grinding those as an input might work.  No one is going to roast pumpkin in the middle of being sick, although I just did since I feel better five days later, and there was a Japanese pumpkin no one was using in the kitchen.

roasted pumpkin with spices and ice cream is nice

Let me know what you think, if any of this rings a bell, even though no one ever does.  Or if it sounds awful; whichever way that goes.

Tea and illness

This is the theme I've been on lately, scaling back exposure to tea due to a nasty sinus infection.  It's been a rough week.  I'll describe how I took it, although I'm not sure the insight will add much to what everyone else already experiences.

I switch over to a lot of tisanes when I'm sick.  That mild and varied flavor range works for me, and there's always the hope that some of it might actually help in some herbal remedy sense.  Even if that doesn't apply drinking a warm liquid does help, and staying hydrated, and contact with a positive range of sensation is nice when you tend to get caught up in experiencing symptoms.  It's completely unnatural to drink a good bit of water at any temperature when you're sick, but it works much better to drink two or three good sized mugs of a mild tisane.

Mamaki, olena (Hawaiian turmeric), and ualoa (not what I was just drinking)

A Hawaiian extended family member (who sort of adopted my wife into theirs, versus the other way around) passed on some soursop tisane from a local Hawaiian producer awhile back.  It doesn't taste like much (I don't think--but maybe it does and I can't tell), but the label says it's good for helping with sleep and boosting immune response. 

Al with Keo; it has been too long, he is hard to pick up these days

this reference mentioned in this related post on Hawaiian tisanes and potential effects

I had a couple of Moychay (Russian producer) compressed tisane cakes on hand, so I've been mixing those in.  One was willow herb / fireweed and the other some sort of blend I didn't check the contents on (the label is in Russian).  A fruit version bar I already finished earlier would've been ideal; I was concerned about how well that would keep so I drank the last of it a few months ago. 

a Moychay tisane bar, which I reviewed here

We bought a lot of chrysanthemum tea in China on that last visit so I drink that alone or mixed in, or once combined with shu pu'er to split the difference.  When I'm not sick mixing sheng and chrysanthemum seems to make a lot more sense, even though I rarely do that, but when you're sick whatever it seems you'll tolerate well is the right thing.


Stopping caffeine entirely brings on a headache and crash, but if the plan is to lie around sick all day that crash can work out.  I only quit tea entirely one day but did drink very little of it for a few, so this served as one of a few small breaks from caffeine that I try to take every year.  Maybe there is no reason to do that but as I see things it can't hurt, and maybe there is a good reason I'd never be completely clear on.  Developed tolerance for level of caffeine doesn't seem to shift as much for some drugs, like alcohol tolerance, at least to me, but I'm sure that would vary by person.  I don't think that caffeine interferes with a healing process when sick, to be clear, I just don't think there is any point in ingesting a stimulant then, and maintenance of a dependency doesn't necessarily count as a good reason.

It's interesting trying teas and noticing how much flavor drops out when you've lost that much sense of taste.  In the last three days I tried a Vietnamese sheng I've been drinking for awhile, and a modest quality aged Yunnan version, and an even better Da Xue Shan.  In all those cases I really did enjoy what came across, more and more each day.  White tea might work in a similar way; even for losing half or more of the flavor the rest might still be nice.  The shu pu'er and chrysanthemum mix I had when I was much sicker was nice, although combining that with sheng makes more sense to me when I'm well, although that I tend to only try a couple times a year, at the most.  Of all those teas the aged sheng was novel for so much of that character being mineral taste (what gets picked up by the tongue) versus aromatic components, I just wouldn't drink really exceptional tea while sick.

The worst part is dropping out my tasting and review habit.  Even that works better for having such a low energy level and fuzzy mind; I feel like I'm about 75% clear while I write this initial draft, which isn't so bad, since I'm usually only ever about 90% clear on a good day.  I'm not sure when that last 10% ever kicks in; not too often.  There's a lot of tea I'm excited to get to--kind vendors have sent a lot of samples lately--and it will just have to wait.

Now that I think about it making an herbal version of masala chai might be nice.  Willow herb / fireweed even oxidizes, unlike most tisanes, so it would be as close as any to a "real tea" version.  I reviewed a version of one in a blog post, and a better pressed version in a Moychay site article.  That spice blend would be nice when sick, drinking a version made from cardamom, clove, ginger, fennel seed, and cinnamon, with just a touch of salt to balance it. 

using fresher, more-whole spices is better but whatever you have on hand will do

Even simmering herbs for 15 minutes is a lot of messing around when your energy level is completely bottomed out, but even during the first draft of this I was in a different middle-ground, recovered enough that using a limited quantity of black tea would also be fine.  An online masala chai recipe mentioned an easy way to get around that; start the tea (or tisane) and herbs simmering, turn off the heat and let it sit for awhile, then reboil and let it sit again (with related posts on making that  here and here).

Eight days after first becoming sick I'm mostly back to normal.  It's nice how illness helps you appreciate little things, like a normal energy level, or tasting food and tea again.