 Roibos, or red tea, is anecdotally reported to aid stress-related symptoms. But has none of the mood-altering phytonutrients thought responsible for the increased calm and decreased stress after drinking green tea? So why do some people feel less stressed drinking red tea? Well, researchers recently found human adrenal gland cells in a Petri dish produce about four times fewer steroid hormones in the presence of red tea. Yes, this could quite possibly contribute to the alleviation of negative effects arising from elevated stress hormone levels, if it actually damped down adrenal function that much in real life. But the effect was so dramatic they became concerned. It might adversely affect the production of sex hormones as well, but that's not what they found when they tested it in human test subjects. The same may not be true, however, of nettle tea. The nettle is used to relieve symptoms of prostate enlargement by boosting estrogen levels, but men drinking too much may grow breasts, and women may start lactating. Nettles are often picked wild, so there's always a risk of someone might accidentally pick something like this instead of this and come down with atropine poisoning, because the nettle tea you thought you were drinking had some belladonna, deadly nightshade. Also, not a good idea to put the leaves in your mouth fresh. They don't call them stinging nettles for nothing. This is a close-up of the impalement of a nettle spicule in the skin, not something you want in your tongue. Nettle tea is touted for its high mineral content, which always seemed kind of strange to me. I mean, yes, if you boil dark green leafy vegetables long enough, dark green leafy leaves, you do lose minerals into the cooking water. But how many minerals could we be getting if we just steep some tea? We never knew, because they hadn't been tested until now. They compared the mineral content of nettle tea to chamomile tea, mint tea, St. John's wort, and sage. Nettle tea didn't seem to have much more than any of the others, but maybe they're all really high. Well, one cup of nettle tea does have the iron of a dried apricot. That's more than I expected. The zinc found in one pumpkin seed, one twentieth of a mushroom's worth of copper, but four peanuts worth of magnesium, and an entire fig's worth of calcium. I agree with the researchers that a cup of herbal tea may not be an important source of minerals, but it's not negligible. Greens are so packed with nutrition. They can benefit from just drinking some hot water they've been soaking in for a few minutes.