Newcastle University student finds mint tea is good pain reliever

Nov 25 2009 by Tony Henderson, The Journal

“Besides traditional use, more than half of all prescription drugs are based on molecules that occur naturally in plants.

“What we have done is to take a plant that is widely used to safely treat pain, and scientifically proven that it works just as well as some synthetic drugs.

“Now the next step is to find out how and why the plant works.”

In order to mimic as closely as possible the traditional treatment, the Newcastle team first carried out a survey in Brazil to find out how the medicine is typically prepared and how much should be consumed. The most common method was to produce a decoction, a process whereby the dried leaves are boiled in water for 30 minutes and allowed to cool before being drunk as a “tea”.

The team found when the mint was given at a dose similar to that prescribed by traditional healers, the medicine was as effective at relieving pain as the Indometacin. Graciela remembers being given the tea as a cure for every childhood illness.

She said: “The taste isn’t what most people here in the UK would recognise as a mint.

“In fact it tastes more like sage which is another member of the mint family.

“Not that nice, really, but then medicine isn’t supposed to be nice, is it?”