What Happens to Your Blood Sugar When You Drink Echinacea Tea?

Echinacea is an herb, often taken as a supplement or brewed into tea as a home remedy for colds. Echinacea tea won’t raise your blood sugar after you drink it. There’s some evidence that echinacea may help lower blood sugar, but this research is in its early stages, so it’s not possible to draw conclusions.

Echinacea Tea Won’t Raise Blood Sugar

When you eat food or drinks containing carbohydrates, your body converts these into glucose (sugar), which raises your blood sugar to varying degrees. Echinacea tea won’t raise your blood sugar, though, because it doesn’t contain any sugar or other types of carbs.

Because there are no carbs in echinacea tea, it also has a glycemic index (GI) of zero. GI is a measure health professionals use to determine how quickly a food raises blood sugar. A GI of zero means a food or drink doesn’t raise blood sugar at all.

Keep in mind that this applies only to unsweetened, plain echinacea tea. If you add sugar, syrups, or other sweeteners to your tea, it would affect your blood sugar.

Echinacea May Help Lower Blood Sugar

Emerging evidence suggests that echinacea can help your body respond more effectively to glucose. However, most of these studies are conducted in test tubes in a lab rather than in real-life settings. Others use animals rather than humans, so their results are less reliable than those from more rigorous research.

Keep in mind that the echinacea extract used in these studies is different from what you’d consume when drinking echinacea tea. Extracts are highly concentrated and deliver significantly more of the herb (and its associated antioxidants and other healthy compounds) than consuming it in its natural form.

Additionally, none of these studies have used humans or natural settings, so their findings may not apply to the average adult drinking echinacea tea.

Can Echinacea Treat Diabetes?

No, echinacea cannot treat diabetes, whether in tea, extract, or supplement form. It’s not even clear if echinacea can effectively lower blood sugar in humans (with or without diabetes). This is because most research has been conducted in test tubes or on rodents. Higher-quality human studies are needed.

The American Diabetes Association has made a statement that there’s no evidence that herbs, of any kind, can treat diabetes. It’s important to talk to a healthcare provider before starting a new supplement regimen, including herbal teas, to ensure it doesn’t interact with your current medications.

Possible Health Benefits of Echinacea Tea

Echinacea’s effects on blood sugar may be debatable, but the traditional medicinal herb does have other health benefits. It’s known for having the following properties:

• Anti-inflammatory
• Antioxidant
• Anticancer
• Antiviral
• Immune-modulating

Numerous studies support the idea that echinacea can stimulate the immune system. For this reason, echinacea tea, extracts, and supplements are often marketed to treat colds and upper respiratory tract infections.

Overall, taking echinacea could reduce your chances of catching a cold, to a small degree, but more research is needed to confirm this connection.

Other Ways to Lower Blood Sugar

Echinacea tea doesn’t raise your blood sugar, but it may not lower it either. If you’re watching your blood sugar due to diabetes or pre-diabetes, or for another reason, consider these strategies to help manage blood sugar:

• Avoid skipping or missing meals
• Drink water instead of soda, juice, or sugary drinks
• Count your carbohydrates
• Limit alcohol
• Monitor your blood sugar and take your medications if you have diabetes
• Use the plate method for portion control