Chestnut Herbal School

Herbal Digestive Calendula Tea:
A Remedy for Heartburn and Peptic Ulcers

Written and Photographed by Juliet Blankespoor

Calendula tea is a remedy for heartburn and peptic ulcers.

If you’re looking for an herb to soothe and repair digestive issues, the cheery flowers of calendula (Calendula officinalis) will be one of your primary allies. Calendula tea is commonly used to help remedy peptic ulcers, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). It supports the healing of gastric and intestinal inflammation from infection or irritation through its vulnerary (wound healing), anti-inflammatory, and antimicrobial actions.

Calendula can be combined with licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra), slippery elm (Ulmus rubra), marshmallow root (Althaea officinalis), and meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) as a natural remedy for GERD, which commonly affects people with the symptoms of heartburn. In the case of peptic ulcers, calendula can be taken concurrently with antibiotic therapy (to address the presence of the bacterial infection of H. pylori or Helicobacter pylori), and then continued for two weeks after finishing treatment. See the notes below for important contraindications.

For a more detailed guide to calendula’s expansive medicinal benefits, visit my article on Growing and Using Calendula.


Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) harvest.

Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) harvest.

Safety and Contraindications: Do not use calendula internally during pregnancy since it has traditionally been used to bring on menses. As calendula is in the aster family, it may cause a reaction for people who are highly sensitive to plants like ragweed (Ambrosia spp.) and chamomile (Matricaria recutita); this possibility is rare, but sensitive individuals should proceed with caution when using calendula for the first time. Rare incidences of allergic contact dermatitis have occurred with the topical use of calendula.

A person pours a cup of calendula tea through a strainer.

Digestive Calendula Tea Recipe

This tasty tea blend is helpful for acid reflux and helps to reduce heartburn through the anti-inflammatory, astringent, and demulcent actions of the herbs. This tea is also helpful for soothing sore throats, peptic ulcers, and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). It can be sipped on as needed or taken daily to help reduce the symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). See below for contraindications for the herbs in this formula.
Course Beverage
Yield 8 fluid ounces

Equipment

  • Large pot
  • Strainer

Ingredients
 
 

  • 2 parts meadowsweet leaves and flowers (Filipendula ulmaria)
  • 1 parts marshmallow root (Althaea officinalis)
  • 1 parts calendula flowers (Calendula officinalis)
  • 2 parts licorice root (Glycyrrhiza glabra or G. uralensis)
  • 8 fluid ounces water
  • Honey or maple syrup to taste - Optional

Directions
 

  • For every 8 fluid ounces (236 ml) of water, use 2 teaspoons (10 ml) of the herb blend.
  • Place the desired amount of herbal blend and water in a pot and bring to a boil.
  • Simmer for twenty minutes and take off the heat.
  • Strain and sweeten with honey or maple syrup if desired.
  • Drink one to three cups a day.
  • Store in fridge.

Notes

Because this tea is best taken tonically (daily), I find it’s helpful to pre-mix a jarful of the dried herbs (in the proportions given above) to store in your cabinet and dip into whenever you’re brewing a batch. Along these lines, I prefer to infuse one to two days’ worth of tea at a time (stored in the fridge). Dosage is up to three cups per day.
Keyword Calendula, Tea
Tried this recipe or have questions?Leave a comment!

Safety and Contraindications: This formula should not be taken internally during pregnancy because of the calendula and licorice (instead use slippery elm alone). The use of meadowsweet is cautioned in people who have aspirin sensitivity (or sensitivity to other salicylate-containing drugs). Meadowsweet may thin the blood; therefore, monitor coagulation values with people who are taking pharmaceutical blood thinners (the evidence for meadowsweet’s effect on coagulation is inconclusive). Marshmallow has no known adverse effects.

Licorice is contraindicated in pregnancy, water retention (edema), heart conditions, and high blood pressure. If licorice is not advisable, omit the licorice from the tea blend, and use a DGL licorice (deglycyrrhizinated licorice) preparation instead. Use the same proportions for the remaining herbs in the formula if you’re omitting the licorice.

See the notes above for contraindications pertaining to calendula.

Meet the Green Mastermind Behind Blog Castanea:

Juliet Blankespoor

JULIET BLANKESPOOR is the founder, primary instructor, and Creative Director of the Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine, an online school serving thousands of students from around the globe. She's a professional plant-human matchmaker and bonafide plant geek, with a degree in botany and over 30 years of experience teaching and writing about herbalism, medicine making, and organic herb cultivation. Juliet’s lifelong captivation with medicinal weeds and herb gardening has birthed many botanical enterprises over the decades, including an herbal nursery and a farm-to-apothecary herbal products business. 

These days, she channels her botanical obsession through her writing and photography in her online programs, on her personal blog Castanea, and in her new book, The Healing Garden: Cultivating and Handcrafting Herbal Remedies. Juliet and her family reside in a home overrun with houseplants and books in Asheville, North Carolina.

Interested in becoming a contributor?

 

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Looking for more blog articles about calendula?

We’ve stocked up everything you need to know about calendula’s healing benefits, plus compiled our recipes for making calendula oils, poultices, salves, and teas.

33 thoughts on “Herbal Digestive Calendula Tea: A Remedy for Heartburn and Peptic Ulcers

  1. Does calendula contain salicylates? Would a child ages 2+ be okay taking a few sips of calendula tea when they aren’t sick? My concern is Reye’s syndrome, but I thought calendula tea would be safe for a child, especially if only sips were taken. I have also read that Reye’s syndrome only occurs after a sickness. Thank you!

    • Melissa Quercia says:

      Calendula does contain some salicylates, so it is advisable to limit its use to topical applications for children unless supervised by a trusted healthcare practitioner such as a clinical herbalist or naturopath. Additionally, individuals with allergies to plants in the Asteraceae family should exercise caution when using calendula.

  2. Thank you for providing such a comprehensive and practical guide. Your blog has become a valuable resource for me, and I’m sure it will help many others on their journey to better manage high cholesterol. Looking forward to more insightful content from you.

    • Melissa Quercia says:

      There are many different herbs that you can pair with calendula. This recipe is just one option. Let us know how that combination works for you!

  3. So this is called Calendula tea but I notice that the recipe calls for twice as much meadowsweet as Calendula. Are they the right proportions?

    • Christine Borosh says:

      Yes, this is correct! Calendula can have a bitter flavor as a tea, so these proportions give this recipe a nice balance so that it will be both tasty and effective.

    • Absolutely! Removing the meadowsweet from this formula sounds like the safest bet. If you’d like to replace it with another astringent herb, raspberry leaf is one option. Plantain leaf is another herb used to support the GI tract.

    • Sarah Sorci says:

      Thanks for clarifying! In the Digestive Calendula Tea recipe, the ingredients can be measured by weight. (Since licorice root and marshmallow root are much heavier than calendula flowers, it would be quite a different tea if measured by volume).

    • Sara Kinney says:

      These herbs have been traditionally used for GERD, and I think that the tea certainly may provide relief. It’s definitely worth a try!

  4. Good day. I know roots should be simmered. And I always steep flowers & leaves. Wouldn’t simmering them for 20 minutes destroy their medicinal goodness?
    Thanks, Rosanna

    • Sara Kinney says:

      That’s a great question. In most cases, we do steep flowers and leaves in hot water rather than simmering them. In this blend, the meadowsweet and calendula can stand a bit of extra heat. Calendula flowers have actually traditionally been boiled with other ingredients to make soup broth, so they’re just particularly hardy little flowers! However, all these herbs would also work as an infusion (by steeping them in hot water). I encourage you to try the formula both ways, once by simmering, and once by steeping. Then you can use the method that works best for you.

  5. I suffer from IBD so I will definitely be keeping this one in my back pocket when I start using naturally grown herbal teas. I recently started growing chamomile and plucking the flowers to dry for later use. Thank you for this great information.

    • Sara Kinney says:

      Yes, this formula will still work well without the meadowsweet. If someone is sensitive to the salicylates in aspirin, the meadowsweet can be omitted.

      • Carrie Brady says:

        That’s good to know. One more question, which I thought of after I had posted my original comment. Would an infusion of only calendula still be helpful for heartburn/reflux?

        • Sara Kinney says:

          Yes, it would. On its own, calendula is definitely helpful for heartburn/reflux, and I actually add a few blossoms to many of my tea formulas that might trigger heartburn. At the same time, the herbs in the formula listed in this article all help heartburn for different reasons, and so the combination is especially beneficial. It would definitely be a worthwhile experiment to try each of these herbs on its own to see which ones are most effective for you.

          • Carrie Brady says:

            Awesome, thank you! Right now, all I have in my stock is the calendula, so I’d love to give that to my husband who suffers from acid reflux now, while waiting to get the other herbs 🙂

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