What Are the Benefits and Contraindications of Drinking Lotus Seeds Infused Water?
Lotus seed is often perceived as a bitter food, but it's not just limited to porridge or other culinary creations. It can also be steeped in hot water for a refreshing drink. This prompts the question: what are the benefits and contraindications of drinking lotus seed tea? Lotus seed tea offers numerous health benefits, including lowering blood pressure, reducing blood lipids, enhancing physical fitness, and providing excellent skin care and moisturizing effects. Let's delve into these benefits in detail and treat lotus seed with the utmost respect.
1. Lowering Blood Pressure
Scientists have conducted experiments extracting lotus seed alkaloid crystals from lotus seeds. These crystals temporarily reduce blood pressure, and they can transform into quaternary ammonium salts, further enhancing their hypotensive effects and prolonging the duration of blood pressure reduction. Additionally, lotus seeds contain non-crystalline alkaloids nn-9, which, like quaternary ammonium salts, exhibit strong blood pressure-lowering effects. Animal experiments have demonstrated that lotus seeds have a significant effect on reducing blood pressure.
2. Strengthening the Heart and Calming the Mind
Lotus seed tea affects the heart, lungs, and kidneys. It contains non-crystalline alkaloids that effectively protect the heart, help dilate peripheral blood vessels, and enhance vascular elasticity, thus preventing cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. Furthermore, drinking lotus seed tea promotes a calming effect, beneficial for individuals with poor sleep quality, frequent insomnia, and irritability.
3. Tonifying the Kidneys and Consolidating Essence
Lotus seed tea nourishes the kidneys. In traditional Chinese medicine, it is believed to have heat-clearing, essence-consolidating, calming, heart-strengthening, hemostatic, and essence-astringent effects. It can be used for symptoms such as impotence and spermatorrhea. Additionally, lotus seeds are rich in phosphorus, a key component of nuclear protein, which aids in protein, fat, and carbohydrate metabolism and maintains acid-base balance. Phosphorus also plays a crucial role in sperm formation, making lotus seed tea beneficial for tonifying the kidneys and consolidating essence.
4. Smoothing the Skin
Experiments have shown that long-term consumption of lotus seed tea can improve skin quality, especially for women who work night shifts or in harsh environments, whose skin may be significantly damaged. Lotus seed tea can effectively reduce skin sagging and wrinkles, lighten fish-eye wrinkles and chloasma, enhance the endocrine system, and improve the body's metabolic rate, reducing the accumulation of pigmentation on the face and minimizing the deposition of melanin.
5. Alleviating Diarrhea, Insomnia, and Poor Sleep Quality
Individuals experiencing insomnia, frequent dreams, and poor sleep quality may also suffer from anxiety and irritability. Drinking lotus seed tea before bedtime can effectively calm the mind and improve sleep quality, with the best effects observed when consumed one hour before sleep.
6. Lowering Blood Pressure and Reducing Lipids
The alkaloids and other non-crystalline alkaloids present in lotus seeds help dilate blood vessels and reduce blood pressure. Additionally, lotus seeds contain lotus leaf alkaloids, which have lipid-lowering activity. These alkaloids form a fat barrier that prevents fat absorption and effectively breaks down and eliminates excess fat from the body, making lotus seed tea an excellent choice for weight loss and lipid reduction.
7. Clearing Heat and Relieving Summer Heat
Lotus seeds have a bitter taste and cold nature, making them effective for clearing heat and relieving heart fire. They are commonly used to alleviate symptoms such as fever, mental confusion, and thirst caused by heat. Especially during hot summers, drinking lotus seed tea can not only quench thirst and relieve heat but also clear away annoyance, making it an ideal beverage for summer.
8. Detoxifying and Nourishing the Skin
Drinking lotus seed tea also has detoxifying and skin-nourishing effects. This is primarily due to the rich antioxidant substances such as vitamin C and carotenoids found in lotus seeds, which can scavenge free radicals in the body, resist skin oxidation and aging, and help improve skin wrinkles and sagging. At the same time, lotus seeds have a bitter and cold nature, which can effectively detoxify and promote the excretion of toxic substances from the body.
