Snot Buster Tea

Snot Buster Tea should rightfully be called "Trikatu." This is an Ayurvedic tea recipe used to improve agni (digestion) for the purpose of eliminating mucus, both in the gut and in the sinuses. I have taken the liberty of renaming this formulation for marketing purposes. Many people have reported remarkable relief from allergy symptoms from using this tea. It is very sweet/hot/spicy so it is easy to imagine it really busting up the snot.  As best as I understand the Aurvedic principals behind this formulation, it is that incompletely digested carbohydrates yield forms of sugars which get absorbed into the bloodstream, causing a mild toxic reaction that aggravates the immune response, often suffered as sinus allergy symptoms. These simple sugars are easily assembled into long chains of polysaccharides that we experience as "snot." This is a vicious cycle where you then inadvertently end up swallowing lots of your own snot. (Since spitting is usually socially unacceptable and even blowing your nose in public is often unacceptable!) This swallowed mucus is not especially digestible and contributes to the mildly toxic immune response being continued.  The Ayurvedic answer is to increase agni, the fire of digestion, to increase the energy to completely digest these mucus polysaccharides in the gut so that they don't get recycled as new snot.  Sorry if this sounds really gross!!! But if you are a sinus allergy sufferer, chances are this is going to make sense, and you realize that bad digestion of sugars (especially dairy sugars, high fructose corn sugars and orange juice) and recycling of snot polysaccharides are the main problems for the toxic/allergy response.  In my experience, most, but not all allergy sufferers who have the snot problem benefit from this blend, for whatever reason. Usually two cups of tea for three days and you will know if this works for you. I've had a number of folks use it regularly for awhile and then forget to use it when they don't have allergy symptoms anymore. Then they are only reminded to use it when they enjoy too much ice cream or whatever their allergy trigger might be.  Agni is a principle of the Fire element. Therefore, Snot Buster tea should be drank hot, even if the weather is hot outside. Bring a teaspoon of this blend to a gentle simmer for a minute or two, turn off the flame and then strain out the seeds after a few minutes. Drink it as hot as you can. Enjoy the sweet and spicy nature of Trikatu!  Instructions for preparing this brew are on the package label.