Chinese Herbal Tea for Eye Health - Goji Berry Chrysanthemum (Cassia Seed) Tea 枸杞菊花(决明子) 明目茶

To launch Chinese Herbal Pantry's YouTube channel, I would like to share with you my favorite Chinese herbal tea. It is the goji chrysanthemum tea with or without cassia seeds. It is a very classic and very popular Chinese herbal tea used to protect our eyesight and to improve vision. In Chinese, it is called Ming Mu Cha. It actually means tea to brighten our eyes. We also use it for some very minor symptoms which I will talk about during the tea making sessions and we also use it to improve our general well-being. So let's just get started. Hi everyone, welcome to Chinese Herbal Pantry. My name is Shirley. I'm a Chinese medicine practitioner and a pharmacist in Australia. This channel is about how to improve health and to relieve minor symptoms by using Chinese herbs So today I'm going to share with you a little bit on how to make a very simple Chinese herbal tea that is for eye strain syndrome or basically just really tired, fussy or dry eyes. I think it's especially important tea in today's world because we stare at computers all day, we stare at TVs all day or we might have multiple screens all at the same time. One very important thing that I want to say when I say all these eye symptoms, only for those who are generally the eyes are quite healthy, no major problem and it's not to have all these symptoms especially when during stress, you know you're staring on the computer for too long without any rest. If there is any symptoms per se or a much chronic problem, please go to see your doctor or optometrist immediately. So today I'm going to introduce three main ingredients. Two are quite common. The other one is an extra ingredient that I would like to introduce, just something extra for you to know, to learn. So let's start with the most commonly, quite commonly used to say is the this is the goji berries. So a lot of us already know what are they, how good they are for us. It's actually even been classified as superfood this day. We put it in everything. So goji berries are considered a tonic in Chinese medicine. So that means that it is to nourish and to replenish. So to nourish and replenish when you have the dry eye. It's considered a very neutral, we say neutral medicine. We classify Chinese herbs as hot or cold and then we have the neutral. So this is neutral. So it's pretty good for a lot of, for most of us. So you don't have to worry whether you are cold or heaty at that time. So this is the goji berry. The other one is the chrysanthemum flowers. So it's this little cute little flowers. So chrysanthemum flowers, we say it's slightly cooling. So cooling just means that, so you need to have a bit of heat sign. One way to say you have a heat sign is when the eye feels kind of a bit warm sensations, has a bit of redness, a bit watery. So that's kind of heat sign. Or you might have, let's say, difficult bowel motions, very smelly stools, a bit of bitter taste in the mouth, just kind of feeling a bit warm sensation. So the chrysanthemum flower is good, we say, to clear the heat in the body, especially those under extreme stress. We're generally speaking, those people will kind of, the body will generate more heaty symptoms. So chrysanthemum flowers are very good for that. So usually these two are very classic combination in Asia. We use that a lot as a combination. You don't have to use both at the same time. The third one, you don't even have to add it on if you, doesn't have to. So you can even just make the goji berries alone, or the chrysanthemum flowers alone. So now we go to the third ingredient. So this is the, we call, in Chinese, we call jue ming zi. English is cashew seeds. This probably a bit harder to get. If you want, you probably have to go to your Chinese herbal store. These two you should be quite easy to get from any half-food store, Asian groceries. So this is the cashew seed. Usually cashew seeds come in raw. That just means without frying. So one, cashew seed is a bit like the chrysanthemum flowers, but also a little bit stronger in terms of the clearing properties. So it's a bit cool. We say it's slightly cold. I would say slightly colder than chrysanthemum flowers. Because of the nature is slightly cold, you can just pan-fry it without oil on your pan. That will help to change the nature a little bit and kind of reduce the coldness. And it's also more gentle on the stomach in that sense. And also after you've pan-fried it, the flavor will come out a little bit more. It will help with the ingredient to release in your tea a bit better. It also has one extra action. The extra action is actually will help people who have constipation. So if you are someone who have constipation at that time or slightly more chronic constipation, it's very good to add these two because it's a seed itself and it has the oil in there. So it will help to smooth your bowel motion. But because of that specific action, two very important thing I want you to be aware of, the precaution you need to take. First is people who have weak digestive system, especially those who have very loose bowel motions most of the time, you have to be very cautious on that. If you want to take it, just take it very short term. And also women who are pregnant, please don't take it. Okay. So let's start with these. How to make the tea. So it's very easy basically. So I have a beautiful teapot here. In terms of specifically exactly how much, usually I would say you don't have to be very scientific about it, just a teaspoon or so. But if you want to be more exact and specific, I would say five gram each or 10 gram each, depending on how big your teapot is. Because flowers is very light. So if you measure properly, you'll notice the flower portion is a lot more than the rest. So let's just assume they are about five gram there. So basically you put it in the pot and then pour the boiling water in and just let it brew for about a good five, 10 minutes or so. The cashew seeds tend to take a bit longer to brew properly. If you just have these two, probably five minutes is enough. Otherwise just let it do its job. And so while you're at home, you can do this. It's very relaxing to do it. And it's really absolutely beautiful with three different colors, the red, the dark brown, and the yellow. For me, I just love to do this at home. But if you are a very busy person and you would like to somehow introduce this to your tea culture, your tea, intentionally drinking tea at home instead of coffee all the time, what you could do, you could just, not sure whether you have seen some of these teabags before. So you could pack a few. And if you're just always running out of time, you can do this, a few bags at once. Just put the three or two or just one, entirely up to you, into the bag. You have done that and you just fold it. So it's already kind of fold. You don't have to seal because how it is made, it just fold like this. And you can prepare quite a few at home, put it somewhere dry and dark. But when you feel that you have that kind of dry eyes or tired eyes, strained eye symptoms, you just get one of this, pop it in your tumbler, pour the hot water in, seal it properly, wait for five, 10 minutes, and you're ready to go. Take it to your commute, take it to work, all very easy. Get the tea, it's beautiful, and have a very slightly light yellow color. And this should be ready to drink. Very, very nourishing and refreshing. The chrysanthemum flower give it the refreshing flavor of smell and the goji berry is slightly sweet. It's quite nice. I like it. That's it for today. And I hope you learn something, you enjoy. If you like the videos that I make and would like to learn more about how to use Chinese herbs at home, don't forget to subscribe. And I'll try to post video probably weekly or fortnightly. So there you go. Enjoy the tea. Thank you and see you next time. Bye.