Problems With Herbal Tea?!?!?!?!

[nama shivaya]

Hi Everyone:

I bought a new tea: Celestial Seasonings' Tension Tamer. As soon as I drank half my cup, my tummy began to cramp a bit, and then came the D.

Do any of you have intolerances to any of the following ingredients?

Eleuthero, peppermint, cinnamon, ginger, chamomile, lemon grass, licorice, catnip, tilia flowers, hops.

I'm not sure what Eleuthero is. I have not had reactions that I know of to items 2,3,4,6 & 7. I'm not sure about the rest.

Can anyone help me shed some light on this mystery? The tea was way yummy, btw. Bummer (no pun intended.)

Thanks!

Nama

[nama shivaya]

Seems Eleuthero is the new name for American Ginseng. Hmmm.

[jerseyangel]

I tried this tea several months ago, and it didn't agree with me, either.

[dionnek]

Isn't hops made from barely? That's not gluten-free.

[Tim-n-VA]

Hops is the other ingredient, along with barley, in most beer. It is not made from barley.

[jerseyangel]

Hops are gluten-free.

Actually, this particular tea is marked gluten-free--

Open Original Shared Link

The company does make other teas that do contain gluten--I'm wondering if this may be a matter of cross contamination.

I now stick to Stash Teas--they're very good, and they don't use gluten in anything they make.

[confused]

  nama shivaya said:

Hi Everyone:

I bought a new tea: Celestial Seasonings' Tension Tamer. As soon as I drank half my cup, my tummy began to cramp a bit, and then came the D.

Do any of you have intolerances to any of the following ingredients?

Eleuthero, peppermint, cinnamon, ginger, chamomile, lemon grass, licorice, catnip, tilia flowers, hops.

I'm not sure what Eleuthero is. I have not had reactions that I know of to items 2,3,4,6 & 7. I'm not sure about the rest.

Can anyone help me shed some light on this mystery? The tea was way yummy, btw. Bummer (no pun intended.)

Thanks!

Nama

Have u ever had reactions to any of the other tea flavors from them.

I do know a few people who drink herbal teas for the laxative effect. I am not sure what ingredient it is tho that causes that.

paula

[Guest Eagle]

Someone gave me this tea as a gift once, and it definitely didn't tame the tension! In fact, I had kind of the same reaction as you. I cannot tolerate hops, I have had an allergy to it all my life. Sometimes even chamomile aggravates my allergies. I guess a person can have an intolerance to just about anything, but my first guess would be hops was the culprit in your digestive distress.

[mn farm gal]

I also had a strang reaction to a herbal tea. I had been drinking tee but switched brands and it looked fine by the label. I had gotten such a huge belly and couldn't figure out what was doing that and went away for a couple of days and was fine came back on monday drank a couple of cups of tea for just a couple of days and the belly got huge again, then I figured out my link. The first time it got so uncomforable to wear pants with a nice waist line like jeans that I ended up wearing a type of streach dress pants to work one day. Glad that is over.

[hathor]

Of course, there is probably no ingredient that doesn't have someone who reacts to it. If I had to pick a likely ingredient, it would be the licorice, since this is a legume and many react to one or more of them. (Realize that licorice the ingredient is different than licorice the candy ...) Do you have problems with any other legume -- peanut, soy, any type of bean, lentil, etc.? I react to soy and fairly recently reacted to a gluten-free pasta with lupin flour (yet another legume). I may be reacting to peanuts now too ...

However, I can eat beans and lentils without problems, and I've been having this very tea without problems too. One can react to one legume and not others.

My second choice would be chamomile because I've heard of people reacting to that before and you don't list it as previously being safe for you.

You can always google on an ingredient with the word "allergy" and see the cross-allergies. Perhaps something will seem likely to you. I know I thought I was being paranoid when I googled "lupin allergy" -- then I found out all about it

[corinne]

I don't have time to double-check, but when I was in Boulder, I visited Celestial Seasonings and they said that their teas may not be gluten free because of the starch used to seal the teabags. This was 3 years ago so I'm not sure if this is still true and if this is the case with all of their herbal teas.

[hathor]

  corinne said:

I don't have time to double-check, but when I was in Boulder, I visited Celestial Seasonings and they said that their teas may not be gluten free because of the starch used to seal the teabags. This was 3 years ago so I'm not sure if this is still true and if this is the case with all of their herbal teas.

On the Celestial Seasonings web site, I checked out a number of teas (the ones I've bought) and they all said they were gluten-free.

I haven't checked each individual tea, but I would think any gluten from the tea bags would be in everything. Either they have double-checked their information or changed their tea bags Open Original Shared Link

In their FAQs they carefully explain about soy lecithin and what their natural flavorings contain and don't contain (like MSG). Since gluten isn't mentioned in this section and individual teas are labeled as gluten-free, it seems to me that their teas would be safe on this score.

Of course, now you have me wondering about the other teas I use

[CMCM]

Herbal teas and also various herbal type pill supplements simply do not agree with me. However, I have had no problems at all with various green teas, including some of the Celestial Seasonings ones.

[BRUMI1968]

Doesn't lemon grass get some folks? When I used to eat Thai food, I couldn't have anything with lemon-grass coconut milk. Though now I make rice pudding with coconut milk, and it does not seem to bother me. Not sure. Just an idea.