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Feel Your Best This Holiday Season with this Anti-inflammatory Hack
Who doesn’t love the holiday season? I especially love the two-month long excuse to make and enjoy comfort food, but I don’t always love the way I feel afterwards, so I developed this recipe for my gut healthy detox tea to help minimize bloating and promote digestion. This tea combines some of the most powerful natural digestive agents like ginger, ACV, lemon, honey, and chia seeds. Once you start drinking it every morning, you might never stop – you can really tell a difference!
Working This Tea Into Your Morning Routine
This tea is the first thing that I drink in the morning, before any coffee or food, and I swear by it. I can tell a difference in my energy levels and improved digestion when drinking this daily, and this is because of the health benefits that each of the different ingredients in it provide:
Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV): ACV is made up of fermented apples and loaded with healthy ingredients like probiotics and antioxidants. Drinking it before meals can actually help to stabilize your blood sugar while improving digestion (Cristino, 2024).
Ginger: Ginger contains antioxidants and is excellent for digestion and helping with bloating, among other wonderful health benefits (Slattery, 2023).
Lemon: Aside from adding great flavor to food and beverages, lemons have been proven to have loads of health benefits including improving digestion and overall gut health, while also helping reduce blood sugar levels (West, 2019).
Chia Seeds: Chia seeds are a wonderful and versatile ingredient that people love because of the anti-inflammatory benefits that they offer, alongside their properties that support digestion and reduce blood sugar (Restivo, 2024).
Raw Honey: Lastly, raw honey adds a deliciously sweet flavor to drinks and food – but it doesn’t stop there. Raw honey is a nutrient-rich substance that can help with healing and digestion (Goldman, 2015). I also love buying local raw honey because it can help with seasonal allergies, too!
Why I Created This Anti-Inflammatory Recipe
I am very intentional with my ingredients, I like to develop recipes that are both delicious and that will work for me by offering extra nutritional benefits to my body.
Earlier this year, I discovered that my body produces antibodies that attack my thyroid. My doctor highly recommended that I stick to an anti-inflammatory diet because of the correlation between thyroid function and inflammation. I create most recipes, including this tea, with anti-inflammatory properties in mind. I’ve noticed that eating as clean as possible has made me feel better, heal faster, and help with my overall cognitive function. I am by no means a doctor or registered dietician, but I did want to share my personal “why” for creating recipes like this one because eating this way really has positively impacted my health, and I figured maybe it could help others, too.
How to Make This Gut Health Glow Tea
Juice Your Ginger: Start by peeling your fresh ginger, cutting it into chunks, and then juicing it – collecting everything in a bowl that’s easy to pour
Juice Your Lemons: Juice your lemons, adding the juice to the same container that the ginger juice is in
Add Your Honey and ACV: Next, add your honey and apple cider vinegar into the same container as your ginger and lemon juice and stir well until fully combined
Transfer Mixture: Transfer your mixture into an ice cube tray, filling each cube about 4/5 of the way full
Add Your Chia Seeds: Scoop your chia seeds into each ice cube mold and stir
Freeze Your Cubes: Place your cubes in the freezer and allow them to fully set
Enjoy Your Cubes: Pop a cube out and place it into a mug of hot water to enjoy in the morning before you eat
Ingredients:
- Fresh Ginger (juiced)
- Lemons (juiced)
- Organic honey
- Apple cider vinegar
- Chia seeds
Tools:
- Juicer or blender (I love this Hamilton Beach juicer that I got on Amazon for $59!)
- Ice cube tray
Full Recipe:
Print
Gut Healthy Glow Tea
Ingredients
- 1 cup ginger (juiced)
- 3 lemons (juiced)
- 1/4 cup ACV
- 3 tbsp organic honey
- 12–14 tsp chia seeds (1 per cube)
Instructions
- Juice Your Ginger: Start by peeling your fresh ginger, cutting it into chunks, and then juicing it – collecting everything in a bowl that’s easy to pour
- Juice Your Lemons: Juice your lemons, adding the juice to the same container that the ginger juice is in
- Add Your Honey and ACV: Next, add your honey and apple cider vinegar into the same container as your ginger and lemon juice and stir well until fully combined
- Transfer Mixture: Transfer your mixture into an ice cube tray, filling each cube about 4/5 of the way full
- Add Your Chia Seeds: Scoop your chia seeds into each ice cube mold and stir
- Freeze Your Cubes: Place your cubes in the freezer and allow them to fully set
- Enjoy Your Cubes: Pop a cube out and place it into a mug of hot water to enjoy in the morning before you eat
For more recipes like this one, follow me on social media at @dinneratallis!
Resources:
- Cristino, V. (2024, August 2). A Spoonful of Apple Cider Vinegar Before Meals Has Changed My Life. Vogue. https://www.vogue.com/article/a-spoonful-of-apple-cider-vinegar
- Goldman, R. (2015, February 19). The Top 6 Raw Honey Benefits. Healthline; Healthline Media. https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/top-raw-honey-benefits
- Restivo, J. (2024, February 21). Chia seed benefits: What you need to know. Harvard Health. https://www.health.harvard.edu/nutrition/chia-seed-benefits-what-you-need-to-know
- Slattery, E. (2023). Ginger Benefits. Www.hopkinsmedicine.org. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/ginger-benefits
- West, H. (2019, January 7). 6 Evidence-Based Health Benefits of Lemons. Healthline; Healthline Media. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/6-lemon-health-benefits#improve-digestion
Disclaimer: I’m not a dietician, this is my personal experience with drinking this tea daily as someone on and anti-inflammatory journey. It may not work the same for everyone, but I thought it worth sharing.