Starting Off with Some Jamaica Tea Can Make for a Good Day

The side of the cup says “Coffee” but the inside is filled with freshly brewed jamaica tea, made from hibiscus flowers.

Having been ambulanced to the emergency room due to severe pain from kidney stones a couple of years ago, I now have a greater sense of what’s going on inside my body even though I can’t see in there.  I have not experienced such a bout of pain since then, but I do know when some small piece of calcium (or whatever the makeup of those miniscule stones is) wants to work its way out through my internal plumbing.  I’ve found that adding extra vinegar to my salad after the first sensation of a stone beginning its journey usually does the trick.  My guess is that the acidic vinegar gets to the stone and breaks it up.

However, since the first of the year. I’ve been drinking jamaica tea, which one of my colleagues had recommended as a way to lower high blood pressure.  Based on my personal experience (and what a Fiesta sales clerk told me), it’s good for the kidneys as well.  I usually drink a large cup of the hot jamaica tea in the morning and another with my supper, and for about this past month and a half, I haven’t felt even a tinge of the sensation of a kidney stone starting its trek.

Jamaica (pronounced huh-mIcah in Spanish) actually is dried hibiscus flower petals and is often sold as one of several traditional cold beverages in taquerias.  After my co-worker recommended it, I tried to make an iced tea with it but wasn’t crazy about the taste, so the bag I had bought stayed stuffed into one of the canister jars on the counter.  When I returned to a cold house from a Christmas trip, I thought hot tea would hit the spot and decided to give the jamaica another shot.  Some people describe the taste as akin to cranberry juice.  There’s a tartness to the drink, but I don’t use sugar in any tea, hot or cold.  Now I prefer it to orange pekoe, a “regular” tea I like.  Some people add sugar or honey, but I drink any tea “plain”.

I find my cup of jamaica tea really gets my day started, without the caffeine jolt of coffee.  I’ve already used up the batch I bought last fall.  I can’t find it in bulk at my neighborhood store, so the pre-bagged version will have to do.  I’ve also seen it sold in boxes of individual tea bags.  However, I’ve got an adapter for my Keurig one-cup, and that works great to make any loose leaf tea.

Whether for its health benefits or a good way to start off the day, jamaica tea (hibiscus tea) might be something that you want to try.

Saturday Morning Musings: Earthquakes and Kidney Stones

I’ve just taken Annie out for her early morning break and cranked up the computer to see what’s going on.

It seems like this earth has an earthquake season, when one hits in one part of the world, we soon hear about another somewhere else.  In January it was Haiti; now the morning news says there was an 8.8 earthquake in the early morning hours that hit the central part of  Chile.  According to Chilean sources, the center was some 70 miles northeast of Concepcion, which is the second largest city in Chile and is on the coast about 200 miles south of Santiago, the capital.

I visited Chile twice, after meeting some great people from there online.  It’s a beautiful country because of its location, lying along the Andes Mountains on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west.  The landscape is amazing everywhere, and the people are very hospitable and decent.  I hope everyone that I met down there is OK.

Here is a link to a video of a fallen bridge (which I believe is in the Santiago area) that I scooped up from latercera.cl (an online newspaper out of Santiago, which I read).  There are also quite a number of images here.  Live broadcast from TVChile here.

Now for the kidney stones:  Overall, I’m pretty healthy and have very few health issues in my life.  Probably, the worst thing has been getting a finger broken by pulling a garage door down the wrong way.  But Thursday morning I was at work and started to have the worst pains in my lower stomach area.  They became so severe, I just could do nothing.  To make a long story short (if I ever can do that), an ambulance was called and I was taken to the emergency room and after several more hours more of miserable pain and several tests, it was discovered that I had a kidney stone that was working it’s way through.  After about 8 hours in the emergency room, I was released with prescriptions for pain and nausea.  I’ve mostly rested since then, but yesterday I started to feel better, but worn out.  This morning, I feel fine.  I know that I will have to change my eating, especially drinking more water and juices, instead of the 4 or 5 Coke Zeroes that I have been accustomed to.