The History of Pine Needle Essential Oil and Why You Should Not Drink Too Much Pine Needle Tea
The historical record of pine needles -- the pine tree is one of the oldest plants on Earth. Pine trees existed as far back as the age of the dinosaurs. In 2004, glaciologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, drilling an ice core at a depth of 3200 m beneath the Greenland ice sheet, discovered fresh pine needles 2 million years old for the first time, and they were still active. This discovery caused a great sensation in the biological world and demonstrated the tenacious vitality of pine needles.
In ancient China there were already records of people enjoying long life by eating pine needles and drinking pine needle tea. Relying on their rich imagination and reasoning, the ancient sages reached the conclusion that if one wanted to "live forever", one had to extract the essence from long-lived things. In their observation of natural phenomena, they found that pine trees and cypress trees had the most vigorous vitality and the longest lifespan.
In China's first ancient pharmacopoeia, the Shennong Bencao Jing (Divine Farmer's Materia Medica), there is the saying that "the pine is the food of immortals." The so-called "immortals" here actually refer to those long-lived elderly people with sharp ears and bright eyes. The Shennong Bencao Jing divided medicines into three grades: those that could only cure disease were "inferior medicines"; those that could both cure disease and strengthen vitality were "middle medicines"; and only those that could at the same time sustain life and help prolong longevity were "superior medicines." Among the "superior medicines," the first to be mentioned is the "pine."
The Baopuzi by Ge Hong, a great physician of the Eastern Jin dynasty, records a story about palace maids of the Qin palace. At the end of the Qin dynasty, when Liu Bang and Xiang Yu attacked Xianyang, the palace maids fled deep into the mountains during the chaos of war. Under the guidance of the old people in the mountains, they ate only the fruits of pines and cypresses and pine needles. As a result, they all had rosy faces and feared neither cold in winter nor heat in summer. Legend says these palace maids all lived to be over 300 years old, and their hair remained black and glossy.
Why pine needle tea should not be drunk in large amounts
As everyone knows, pine needle tea is a health tea. Just like the health supplements we usually take, if we take too much of it, it still causes a certain amount of harm to the body. Why should pine needle tea not be drunk in large amounts? Pine needle tea is a cooling tea; if taken over the long term, it will make our body feel uncomfortable. Especially for girls during menstruation, it is important to remember not to drink much of it. A cooling tea will make a girl's abdomen extremely uncomfortable. Secondly, pine needle tea is also a bitter tea; drunk in the mouth, it has a slight sweet bitterness. If too much is drunk, it will also affect our appetite. Only with a good appetite can one have a good body. If someone drinks too much of a tea beverage because of personal preference and this causes some discomfort in the body, this is a sign of being irresponsible toward one's own body. Pine needle tea has the effect of lowering blood pressure, so many patients with high blood pressure particularly love to drink this tea. Drinking too much makes the body gradually become thin. This is not a correct way to drink tea; it should still be drunk under a doctor's guidance.