What do you consider to be an efficient approach to fixing one's sleep? Internet is overloaded with melatonin and magnesium tip, but I am more or a natural solution person - I feel that circadian rhythm restoration is a much better deal when it comes to longevity, at least. What do you do with your sleep mismatches vs your desired schedule?
I had a conversation with a group of young people 17-22 y.o. and one of them mentioned he'd love to study for a Tea Maker... I realized I know nothing about this aspect :) Do you?
I missed our check-in last Sunday because I was sick, so I'm making up for it with a slightly strange one today 😄
Three ingredients. All visible in the photos.
I think one is fairly easy, one is tricky, and I'll be seriously impressed if anyone gets the third.
No cheating 😄
What are your three guesses?
And, as always, what's in YOUR cup this Sunday?!
What herb am I missing in a "fall immunity / preparing for winter" herbal tea blend? I'm thinking about choosing 5 - up to 8 from:
- rosehip
- Korean ginseng
- blueberry leaf
- raspberry leaf
- cinnamon
- ginger
- turmeric
- black pepper
- long pepper
- lemon verbena
- dandelion root
- licorice root
- lavender
- summer savory
- sage
- damiana
- thyme
- bayleaf
I'm very curious to see your suggestions. With so many talented and inspired herb lovers here in the community I anticipate many tips and recommendations. Please invest a moment in putting your 5 cents in the recipe!
I'm experiencing this almost daily lately. Might be hormones or something like that, but it doesn't feel okay
Hi, I've got a friend who has a clinic and would like to train a sleep technologist. There are a couple candidates and preferred mode is online, at least as much as possible online with occasional or final exams on campus. USA, Canada, EU georgaphies are perfect
Hi, I keep getting contraversial inputs on drinking water: quantities, timing, quality, etc.
Could you please share your insights, knowledge, pratical cases? Any tips are very appreciated, even the smallest ones.
I have MCAS, so microbiome became a very practical subject for me, not just something interesting to read about.
Over the years I tried quite a lot. Food rotation (at some point I was rotating foods every 4 days), keeping food very fresh / freezing leftovers immediately, fermented foods, fermented herbs, increasing plant diversity, different types of fiber, psyllium, chia, etc. Some things helped, some were too aggressive for me, and some probably helped only as part of the whole picture.
One thing I started understanding is that I probably concentrated too much on which bacteria or which probiotic and not enough on what I was feeding the whole ecosystem every day.
This is where sprouts became very interesting for me.
Not because they are some miracle microbiome food. But because at home I can have flax today, fenugreek, lentils, alfalfa, broccoli, mung etc. Different plants, different fibers, polyphenols and plant structures. And I always eat the whole thing, including the hulls. For me this started making more sense than just adding another spoon of isolated fiber.
Another point for MCAS specifically: freshness matters a lot to me. With my own sprouts I know exactly when they were grown and harvested. There is basically no storage chain between the plant and my plate :) unless I screw it up myself.
I don’t think sprouts fix the microbiome despite this is what many experts insists on. My own experience actually pushed me in the opposite direction... there probably isn’t one thing that fixes it. Rotation, diversity, fiber, fermented foods, sleep, activity etc. all seem to interact. And ofc I know my soft spots after a few years with MCAS which turned me into a very attentive and observative dude eager to learn more about the triggers and safe scenarios.
But if somebody asked me what is one realistic microbiome thing you can do in a city apartment, sprouts would be very high on my list. Oh, probably they'd pop up the first :)
This is one of my current batches in the photo, and one more if you scroll it, and one more, and more :) I love these tiny plant embrios also for giving me the confidence in my food - with MCAS you really need this for avoiding many potential problems.
Curious if others here experimented with them seriously.
Do you see sprouts as just nutritious food, or as a useful microbiome strategy too?
I have MCAS fow several years, so microbiome became a very practical subject for me, not just something interesting to read about.
Over the years I tried quite a lot. Food rotation (at some point I was rotating foods every 4 days), keeping food very fresh / freezing leftovers immediately, fermented foods, fermented herbs, increasing plant diversity, different types of fiber, psyllium, chia, etc. Some things helped, some were too aggressive for me, and some probably helped only as part of the whole picture.
One thing I started understanding is that I probably concentrated too much on which bacteria or which probiotic and not enough on what I was feeding the whole ecosystem every day.
This is where sprouts became very interesting for me.
Not because they are some miracle microbiome food. But because at home I can have flax today, fenugreek, lentils, alfalfa, broccoli, mung etc. Different plants, different fibers, polyphenols and plant structures. And I always eat the whole thing, including the hulls. For me this started making more sense than just adding another spoon of isolated fiber.
Another point for MCAS specifically: freshness matters a lot to me. With my own sprouts I know exactly when they were grown and harvested. There is basically no storage chain between the plant and my plate :) unless I screw it up myself.
I don’t think sprouts fix the microbiome despite this is what many experts insists on. My own experience actually pushed me in the opposite direction... there probably isn’t one thing that fixes it. Rotation, diversity, fiber, fermented foods, sleep, activity etc. all seem to interact. And ofc I know my soft spots after a few years with MCAS which turned me into a very attentive and observative dude eager to learn more about the triggers and safe scenarios.
But if somebody asked me what is one realistic microbiome thing you can do in a city apartment, sprouts would be very high on my list. Oh, probably they'd pop up the first :)
This is one of my current batches in the photo, and one more if you scroll it, and one more, and more :) I love these tiny plant embrios also for giving me the confidence in my food - with MCAS you really need this for avoiding many potential problems.
Curious if others here experimented with them seriously.
Do you see sprouts as just a potential trigger food, as a nutritious functional food or as a useful microbiome strategy too?
I often think about this. I cannot help that. I wish I knew these simple things back then and acted accordingly:
- eliminate all detergents and home care products with crazy aggressive chemicals from my place
- eliminate all cosmetics with a regular list of ingredients that provoke mast cells (most commercial brand are a disaster in this sense)
- don't touch packaged food as most of it contains preservatives, colorants, aromas, flavors, emulsifiers, flavor enhancers and all that crap that makes mast cells very vulnerable
- protect religiously my circadian rhythm (not only sleep time)
- eat as much dietary fiber as I can for feeding my gut microbiota - the good bugs
- put effort in eating living food instead of cooked as much as possible - I wish I started sprouting my food earlier!
- get medical checkups on a regular basis for discovering micronutrient deficiencies soo er than later
- reduce stress to minimum because it will drain the remaining resistance power
Share with those who need this 🙏 and please share your tips and "I wish I started this earlier" 🙃
Herbal tea cheers to everyone! Today is our special edition of Sunday tea cup check-in in r/Herbaltea and as a mod I'd be happy to greet in person each and every commenter who'll share their Sunday tea cup with a little gift🎁. r/Herbs got together many herb lovers, same did our tea community.
Btw, tea by far is the form in which herbs have the biggest consumption, maybe after the direct culinary usage, though :) Herbal tea is definitely the biggest category for medicinal herbs 🌿
I hope this invitation sounds like a good opportunity to expand your knowledge of herbs - uou have nonidea how many creative herbal tea recipes are out there! 🙈😍☕️
Have a great weekend and hope to e-meet you soon 🙏
Sunday tea check-in ☕️
I clearly wasn't in the mood for a quiet, sensible cup today 😄
There are four things in this pot. Some are probably very easy to spot, one maybe less so.
What’s in your cup this Sunday? And bonus points if you can guess everything in mine 🌿
P.s. hand-made lavender candle nicely complements the herbal setup : the aroma of natural bee wax + lavender creates a really pleasant atmosphere. I love burning candles, btw :)
I'm experiencing this a lot lately. Especially carb. I have never been much of a sweet tooth, but my sleep got disrupted badly by stess and I'm a desert craving macine at the moment, all of a sudden... Any suggestions how I can deal with this effectively and asap?
Honestly, looking at how modern cities are built makes me want to scream into a pillow.
This isn't just an abstract urban planning topic for me - it's my daily life... Several years ago, after a series of brutal antibiotic rounds combined with living in a squeaky-clean, newly renovated apartment with zero green space, my microbiome completely collapsed. I ended up developing MCAS (Mast Cell Activation Syndrome). Now my immune system treats basic, everyday things like a life-or-death threat. On bad days, even sitting on synthetic carpet or walking past fresh paint can trigger a flare-up.
When your body's internal ecosystem breaks down, you realize fast how deeply connected we are to the external ecosystem - and how desperately sterile our cities have become.
We’ve spent the last century treating urban spaces like giant, sterile hospital operating rooms. Concrete everywhere, fake turf, plastic-coated benches, and pristine lawns doused in chemicals the second a wild weed dares to sprout. The result? Our urban environments are biological deserts and our immune systems are so bored, confused, and depleted that they start waging full-scale civil war against normal food, dust, and pollen. Brrr...
A study out of Finland blew my mind recently: researchers literally just put a mat filled with raw, rich forest-floor soil inside the entryway of city apartments. That was it. No high-tech bio-reactors, just actual dirt at the front door.
Within two weeks, the air microbiome at kid-level completely transformed. Instead of breathing in a depressing cocktail of dead skin flakes and synthetic dust, toddlers were inhaling beneficial woodland microbes. The diversity spike was massive, the exact kind of exposure linked to a drop in childhood asthma, eczema, and autoimmune nonsense.
And what are city planners doing with this info? Absolutely nothing.
They’re still ripping up real grass in neighborhood parks to pour down "low-maintenance" poured-in-place rubber. They're still obsessive-compulsively mowing every patch of urban green space until it looks like a golf course, completely killing off the soil microbiome that’s supposed to be keeping us healthy.
We are literally paying thousands a month in rent to live inside plastic-wrapped boxes while our immune systems fall apart.
So, r/Urban_Microbiome, I need a reality check:
Rant over. Drop your hot takes, indoor plant bio-hacking experiments, or city planning grievances below.
Let’s make our cities gross and alive again
Re: a post follwoed by a recommendation to use lavender essential oil
Hi fam, I felt like sharing this story and asking for tips and advice of how to deal with this attitude of people who do not have MCAS and recommend essential oils (in this case lavender) as wondeful holistic NATURAL remedies for nearly everything. This one is just an individual case, one out of many thousands.
I usually step in and explain why it is not okay and what the risks are. Somehow essential oil lovers are usually very aggrressive and attack in response to any form of explanation, quotes, documents (I usually bring up the MSDS on a few essential oils with all the hazards and toxicity written or conveyed via the dedicated international pictograms).
How do you deal with this type of situations? Do you simply pass by? Do you interfere? What do you do?!
Please take your time and share. Thank you
7,000 of us! ☕🌿
I wanted to celebrate this one a little differently.
This mosaic is made from your photos shared here in r/HerbalTea: your cups, herbs, blends, experiments, tea shelves and little rituals from around the world.
Thank you to everyone who posts, answers questions, shares something they've discovered, or simply stops by to see what everyone else is brewing 💚
And since it's Sunday, we can't skip our little tradition:
What's in your cup today!? and can you spot your photo in the mosaic? 👀☕
I often think about this. I cannot help that. I wish I knew these simple things back then and acted accordingly:
- eliminate all detergents and home care products with crazy aggressive chemicals from my place
- eliminate all cosmetics with a regular list of ingredients that provoke mast cells (most commercial brand are a disaster in this sense)
- don't touch packaged food as most of it contains preservatives, colorants, aromas, flavors, emulsifiers, flavor enhancers and all that crap that makes mast cells very vulnerable
- protect religiously my circadian rhythm (not only sleep time)
- eat as much dietary fiber as I can for feeding my gut microbiota - the good bugs
- put effort in eating living food instead of cooked as much as possible - I wish I started sprouting my food earlier!
- get medical checkups on a regular basis for discovering micronutrient deficiencies soo er than later
- reduce stress to minimum because it will drain the remaining resistance power
Share with those who need this 🙏 and please share your tips and "I wish I started this earlier" 🙃
Вчера това се случи буквално на няколко минути от нас в Изток. Електрическата кола се е запалила и огънят е засегнал и колата пред нея. Днес минах оттам и гледката е доста брутална.
Някой знае ли какво точно е станало? Видяхте ли пожара вчера?
I'm experiencing this almost daily lately. Might be hormones or something like that, but it doesn't feel okay
Happy Friday! ☕️🍃
What's one herb you drank this week?
New discovery or old favorite. I'd love to hear what it was and how you liked it 🌸🍵