What kinds of tea help with the symptoms of asthma?
Author: I have heard that tea could help relieve asthma symptoms, but I don't know if it's green or black, and if there are any herba/ teas that might help.
I have heard that tea could help relieve asthma symptoms, but I don't know if it's green or black, and if there are any herba/ teas that might help.
In theory, there are two things about tea that can help: the steam/hot liquid (which is a wash in comparison) and the bromoxanthines like caffeine. These chemicals have weak bronchodilator properties, enough for people to talk about but not enough to be useful. Your rescue inhaler is several orders of magnitude more potent.
There may also be something immeasurable here. Before rescue inhalers were ubiquitous, the primary drug used for asthma was a stronger bromoxanthine-type drug, theophylline. It's fallen out of favor in both asthma and COPD for the most part, because the combination of theophylline and albuterol, as an example, shows no measurable benefit over albuterol alone. And yet some patients, more with COPD than asthma, feel like they're breathing better even when their spirometry shows no improvement.
If you want to experiment, I'd think the strongest, blackest tea you can stand would be the thing to try first.