Transcript to follow. To listen to Cindi's full interview, you can listen on iTunes. Make sure to subscribe to our Podcast and never miss another episode.
Announcer: New to the living healthy lifestyle? Or a healthy living veteran? This is your place for honest answers. Naturally Savvy with Registered Holistic Nutritionist Andrea Donsky and health journalist Lisa Davis.
Andrea Donsky: Hello, everybody. At Naturally Savvy Radio, we have the benefit and the honor to speak to a lot of people. Some of those people are Naturally Savvy partners, and today, we are going to speak to Cindi Bigelow, President of my favorite tea company, because I love tea. For those of you who have been to NaturallySavvy.com, you see we talk about Bigelow Tea a lot, and what's super exciting is that they just launched a brand-new line of teas called “Benefits.” Cindi, they are so delicious! I would love you to tell everybody what the line represents and why you developed it.
Cindi Bigelow: The line is called Bigelow Benefits, and it is doing extremely well and being very well received. Tea is good for you, as you know because you're such a big fan of it. We wanted to design a tea that went to the next level and catered towards specific health concerns of the population. We sat down, and we identified seven basic areas that we knew were big topics. For me, there are so many women that I talk to that have sleep issues. We have a very popular tea called Sweet Dreams, and it's delicious, but this was taking the idea of a Sweet Dreams to the next level. We brainstormed and realized sleep was critical. Detoxing and keeping your body clean is also critical. Stomach issues are critical. So we brainstormed and ended up with seven different teas.
Our Chamomile Lavender, which is our sleep, has multiple ingredients in it to help the person get to a better place of sleep. None of the ingredients are drugs. That's for sure, but they're safe, which I think is important. There's a lot of ingredients out there that your body gets dependent on, and that's not in any of these. They're safe. They're delicious, and they really satisfy people’s concerns in certain areas of health. It's been great. I love them.
Here are some suggestions to help you sleep better
Andrea Donsky: I've tried them all and loved them. My absolute favorite is Balance. The reason I love it is because it helps balance blood sugar. It has research-proven ingredients like cinnamon (known to balance blood sugar), blueberry, fennel, rose hips and apples. I love the idea that you took common issues that people are experiencing and created teas to give them another avenue to feel better. Would you refer to the Benefits line as a functional beverage?
Cindi Bigelow: I would definitely say they are functional. It’s important to note though that your body won’t become dependent on them. The line was designed so you could have three, four, five, six cups a day. No dependence, but at the same time, they really do help to supplement that healthy lifestyle.
Andrea Donsky: Is Calm Stomach for people who have issues with digestion?
Cindi Bigelow: The Calm Stomach is a very, very important one and is probably one of the most popular. That was designed because I got acid reflux. During a very stressful period in my life, I got acid reflux, and I had to change my entire diet, and I had to really put in certain ingredients that were really important to help calm the stomach.
Andrea Donsky: The ingredients in Calm Stomach are peppermint, ginger, licorice root, fennel and marshmallow root, all of which help to calm the stomach. The next tea I want to talk about is Sleep. One of the ingredients in this formula is passionflower. Tell us a little bit about how passionflower can help us with sleep.
Cindi Bigelow: It's the essential oil in passionflower that actually has a reaction in the body. So it’s important to protect the essential oils because if they dry out, then the active ingredient in the herbs are of no value. Some of us like to store our loose tea in a container, but that is going to dry out the essential oils. The reason why we put all of our teas in foil is to create a vault to keep those essential oils in and to keep those ingredients from drying out. Passionflower was used exactly for that reason because that's one of the ingredients that literally has the effect of relaxing your body. We worked with, basically, an herb company that does a lot in the pharmaceutical industry. They have very, very high-grade herbs. Very carefully protected in terms of from growing on, and we worked with them on the recipes that had the right ingredients. Also, as you know from this particular one, it tastes so good.
Andrea Donsky: So good! The next tea I want to talk about is Stay Well. I love this one because it has Echinacea, lemongrass, peppermint, licorice root, sage (which is so good), and elderflower. Echinacea is great for our immune system so should we drink this tea when we are feeling under the weather, or can it also be enjoyed for proper maintenance?
Cindi Bigelow: In general, it's a good tea to keep your immune system strong. But keep in mind nothing is going to counter if you're doing things that are weakening your immune system. It is also important to ensure you're getting the proper amount of rest you need and eating a good diet. This tea is a supplement to a healthy lifestyle, but definitely, those ingredients help to keep that immune system where it needs to be to fight to fight off viruses.
Read about 8 Immune Boosting Foods
Andrea Donsky: How many cups a day do we need in order to reap the functional beverage benefits?
Cindi Bigelow: I don’t think there's a set level, like three cups a day. If you have our lemon ginger with probiotics, three cups a day is all you need to have to start kicking it into gear, because probiotics have a set number that you need to have in order to activate. I think in general for me, for example, Sleep. I would not say you need to be drinking it all day long, but I would be saying at the end of the night, after dinner, you want one or two cups to help put you into that relaxed state before you go to bed. For me, Radiate Beauty, which we haven’t talked about yet, happens to be one of my favorites, and I might drink three or four cups because it's just good for you, good for your blood system, good for the artery flow.
Andrea Donsky: Let's talk about Radiate Beauty. It has hibiscus, which is one of my favorite tea ingredients. It also has elderberries, acerola juice, licorice root, and aloe vera juice. Tell us why you chose to use these specific ingredients in this tea blend.
Cindi Bigelow: We used ingredients like aloe vera and the blueberry because people are aware of them. They know what they're drinking when they're drinking these teas, but they also know the long-term historical benefit of these ingredients. First, our thinking was: what can we do from a skin refresh point of view, keeping your body at its peak in terms of, let's say, radiance. Then, we worked with a pharmaceutical house and the herb house in Europe. We said, what are the best ingredients that we can put together for that? And what are ones that we feel comfortable using that there's not a build up situation, a dependency situation, but also can resonate? Hearing you, the first thing you're saying is, I love these ingredients because you know they're safe. You know the name. That's important to you. We went with what we knew were ingredients that have age-old history behind them in terms of being good for you.
Andrea Donsky: You have a tea that has turmeric, chili, and matcha called Refresh. The matcha tea, we know, gives you energy. The turmeric, we know is an anti-inflammatory. Why did you choose to use chili powder?
Cindi Bigelow: We knew that people recognized chili as a cleansing ingredient – a lot of people go on diets to help purge their body. It was really fun designing it because there were so many fun ingredients to use, but at the same time, for me, Andrea, I'm thinking, how do I combine them in a way that resonates with the tea drinker? What are the ingredients that you can put together? What's the order of which you put them together so that people can say, yes. That is a really cool combination.
For example, the turmeric. That's a really “in” ingredient right now. Everybody is consuming turmeric in some capacity. At the same time, I didn't want a tea that just tasted like turmeric. That just wasn't going to work for me. So, you definitely can taste the turmeric in it, but you needed to then use other ingredients that could carry that good flavor. That’s so important for us, because again when we started the conversation, how was it done? First, was a concept of, what are the seven things that we want to really reach out and help the consumer address? Next was, how do we find what are the right ingredients that are safe, that people understand? Then, the last element is, how do we make it taste really, really good? That's why these ingredients were built from there.
Read more about the benefits of turmeric and other spices
Andrea Donsky: The last tea is made with chocolate and almond, and it's called Good Mood. Really, chocolate tea? Come on. Hello. Delicious. Tell us a little bit about that.
Cindi Bigelow: That was based on research when we looked at what's happening in our country in terms of issues where drugs are being used, and the increase in depression was pretty significant. It was one of the top issues that we're facing as a country now, and it's only growing. This one, and again, I am not here to tell you that our tea is to impact depression, but we also knew that mood and feeling good is a concern. How did we pull something just help that category? Again, it's not a medicine. That's really where it came from, is the huge increase in drugs that are being used and people having to deal with depression, not feeling good, feeling lost. That was really the premise behind it. Then, of course, it was using delicious ingredients that will put you emotionally in a good place, and also with the antioxidants and the health benefit. Everyone knows almond and chocolate and how good that is for you. Built to be really good for your body with the ingredients that people were comfortable with, but at the same time, would help really put you in that even keel mood when you were drinking it.
Andrea Donsky: I love it. Cindi, this was so informative. I love finding about new products, and I'm so happy that we are working with you to get the word out. Where can people find out more information if they want to learn about the Benefits line of tea? And about Bigelow in general?
Cindi Bigelow: There is a lot of information online. You can get all the details about each tea on our website at BigelowTea.com. You can also read about the inspiration behind where the Benefits line came from.
Andrea Donsky: Thank you so much for being a Naturally Savvy Radio sponsor and sponsoring our radio show this month. We are so appreciative, and we're excited.
Cindi Bigelow: I love our conversations. You bring really good information out to your listeners. It's really important that people have somewhere to turn that they can really get good information that's just so good for their everyday living. That's why people listen to you.
Andrea Donsky: Thank you, Cindi, and thank you for doing everything you do and making delicious, amazing, good-for-you tea. I'm Andrea Donsky, and you're listening to Naturally Savvy Radio. Like us on all social media. @NaturallySavvy, @AndreaDonsky, @RadioMD, and @HealthMediaGal1. Don’t forget to visit BigelowTea.com to get more information. Thanks for listening, everyone. Stay well.
To listen to Cindi's full interview you can listen on iTunes. Make sure to subscribe to our Podcast and never miss another episode.
