From
"lucylupus":
could rooibos help lupus pains like yerba mate did ?
is rooibos in your book ?
in 7 years of yerba mate in the morning i never even needed 1 aspirin .
10 days without yerba mate the pain is draining me away.
i am so grateful to ask you this right now.
Hi Lucy,
I am so sorry you have lupus. I don't know why you find that yerba mate helps you. I have not seen any studies on that.
If you found yerba mate was so helpful to you, I have to ask why you are no longer taking it? Why not keep taking yerba mate?
Perhaps antioxidants from your yerba mate have an anti-inflammatory effect? That is just a wild guess on my part.
The only concern about yerba mate that I know of is that there is some association of people who drink it for a long time getting esophogeal and digestive tract cancers. This is controversial. There is speculation though this had to do with the tradition of drinking the mate very hot, and burning the throat repeatedly with any hot liquid can increase esophageal cancer risk.
Do keep getting regular check ups. If you have lupus, you want to stay in touch with your health provider and keep up with your exams and their recommendations. I am not an MD so all I can do is talk in general about studies on plants as supplements without giving any specific health recommendations.
Yerba mate contains caffeine and sometimes people try to stop consuming caffeine. Caffeine is, to my reckoning, unnecessarily vilified. Moderate regular caffeine intake is even associated with several health benefits, so unless you are finding it is causing you insomnia or exacerbating an irregular heart beat, you might want to reconsider if that is why you have stopped taking the yerba mate. Of course, too much of anything is a bad idea, including caffeine.
If you feel awful when withdrawing from yerba mate it may very well be caffeine withdrawal, which can feel very bad. Other caffeinated drinks that also have a good dose of antioxidants are regular green or brown tea, and coffee.
I wish I had rooibos in my book, but I ran out of time to add more herbs before my publishing deadline. In the next edition I want to include more herbs, including rooibos or "red bush tea", since it has become so popular. But there are hardly any good scientific studies on it. The good news is that rooibos is not known to have any obvious negative effects, so you should have as much as you like. Rooibos has no caffeine, and since it is not made with the tea plant (Camellia sinensis) it is considered "herbal" tea. Rooibos does contain a good dose of antioxidants.
For lupus, there is some evidence that taking flax seeds might help, and also vegetables in the broccoli family: broccoli, cabbage, and brussel sprouts, that is. Both contain agents (lignans in flax seeds and indole-3-carbinol in the cruciferous vegetables) that switch estrogen into a less active form of estrogen, and estrogen is thought to play a role in the symptoms of lupus. So some researchers theorize that flax seeds and cruciferous vegetables in the diet might help people with lupus, and it's unlikely to hurt, at least.
Good luck and I hope that helps.
Holly
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