Hello, Munchkin here!!  I am feeling a lot better and the serosi (bitter gourd) tea really worked.  Mouth ulcers gone in 48 hours.  Since, we’re on the subject of herbal teas, Gnome and I  have been experimenting with different teas for insomnia.  We’ve been drinking each of the different teas every night for about a week.  The overall conclusion for each of them is that they help you to get to sleep quicker but then sleep can be interrupted during the night.  None of them actually work great by themselves and the effects seem to lessen with subsequent days. We are looking more in depth into this personal study to see if a combination would actually work better…perhaps with a few more additions.

Here is a summary of some of the main effects from the different teas; do remember that this experimentation is completely subjective.

Passionflower (Passiflora sp.) tea.

Preparation: 12 large leaves including flowers (if you can get them) boiled in 500mls (pint) of water for 15 minutes.  Then steeped for 1 hour.  This makes enough for 2 people.

Effects:  Felt sleepy about 30 minutes after ingestion and managed to fall asleep fairly quickly.  It was a deep, calming sleep but we both experienced interrupted sleep (Gnome couldn’t get back to sleep for about 4 hours and I had a 2 hour sleepless period).  Felt refreshed in the morning on waking up.

White Lily tea:

Preparation: 2 flowers(chopped up) and boiled in 500mls (pint) of water for 15 minutes.  Then steeped for 1 hour.  This makes enough for 2 people.

Effects: Fell asleep within 1 hour and both us experienced prolonged dreams with “running commentary”…ie. dreams with a constant internal dialogue in the background.  The content of the dreams were very mundane like talking about what to prepare for dinner or running through “to do” lists.  We would wake up and then fall asleep in a few minutes back into the same dream (over and over again…sounds really bizarre!).  Woke up in the morning feeling groggy.

Lotus Flower tea:

Preparation: 20 petals boiled in 500mls (pint) of water for 15 minutes.  Then steeped for 1 hour.  This makes enough for 2 people.

Effects: Gnome didn’t get anything out of this one!  We both felt sleepy on drinking the tea but as soon as we got into bed, 30 minutes later, the sleepiness was wearing off!!  Not much information to say about this one!!  Do you possibly have to drink this one in bed so that you can take advantage of the effects as they come on?

Anyway, will keep you posted on our insomnia experimentation…watch this space.