Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Bush tea bush is a leafy West African shrub, Lippia multiflora. Its dried leaves make a sweet, minty tea. In Ghana it is known in Twi as saa nunum.
It is drunk as an everyday hot drink in Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and The Gambia. Home healers also used it for colds, fever, restless sleep and stomach upset. The leaves hold a strong-smelling oil, which is sold on its own as an essential oil.
Here is the honest verdict on the evidence. Nearly all of the research is lab or animal work. Good human trials are few and small.
So the tea is familiar and widely drunk, but it is not proven to treat any illness. Long traditional use is not proof that a plant works, and it is not proof that it is safe. That point is made once here and not repeated in every section below.
Nobody has shown clearly how this plant acts in the human body. What follows is proposed, not settled.
The leaf oil is rich in linalool and 1,8-cineole. In test tubes these slow the growth of some bacteria and fungi. Whether that happens inside a person who drinks the tea is not known.
In animal studies, leaf extracts have lowered blood pressure and calmed activity. These were rodent studies at set doses. They do not tell you what a cup of tea does to you.
The leaves also hold verbascoside and flavonoids. In cell studies these mop up damaging molecules and damp down signs of inflammation. That is a lab finding, not a treatment effect.
On skin, the essential oil appears to put mosquitoes off landing. Small field trials in West Africa have tested oil-based lotions for this. That is the one use with any direct human testing behind it.
You will most often meet it as a leaf tea.
Common forms: - Loose dried leaves, sold by weight - Tea bags, sometimes blended with lemongrass or mint - Fresh leaves, brewed at home in West Africa - Steam-distilled essential oil - Oil-based skin lotions and candles sold to keep mosquitoes away - Liquid or powder extracts in capsules, less often
The tea and the essential oil are not the same thing. The oil is many times stronger. It is made for the skin or for scent, not for swallowing.
The plant has a long record as both a drink and a home medicine in West Africa. Records describe daily use in Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Nigeria and The Gambia.
In Ghana it was called saa nunum in Twi, meaning tea leaf. Writers in the colonial era noted it as a local stand-in for imported tea. Growers in Côte d'Ivoire later farmed it for its oil.
Traditional healers used leaf infusions for fever, coughs, colds and belly pain. Some communities used it for restless sleep, and some for raised blood pressure. Leaves were also burned or rubbed on skin to drive off mosquitoes.
This record describes what people did. It is not a reason for you to treat an illness at home.
Stop and see a doctor if you get a rash, swelling of the lips or face, or trouble breathing. Call emergency services for breathing trouble.
Also see a doctor if you feel faint, very dizzy or unusually drowsy after drinking it.
Go for urgent care if you have fever with chills after being in a malaria area. Do not wait on a tea. Fever lasting more than three days, bad stomach pain or ongoing diarrhoea also need a doctor.
In the United States it is sold as a herbal tea or dietary supplement. It is not approved to treat any disease.
In the UK and EU it is not a licensed medicine. Sale as a food or tea can be limited by novel food rules, so it is easier to find in African food shops.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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