Detox tea aims to clean out and reset your system, leaving you healthier, slimmer, and reinvigorated. Detox tea incorporates a blend of antioxidants and herbal extracts from traditional tea ingredients like dandelion, oolong, and green tea, alongside compounds for weight loss and detoxification, like goji berry, garcinia cambogia, and fenugreek.
While detox tea is not a long-term solution for weight loss or overall health, it’s a great way to kick-start
Our researchers looked into what it takes to detox your body, and where you can get the best detox tea on the market.
Research
Rankings
1. Zero Tea 14 Day Detox Tea
The 14-day detox routine by Zero Tea incorporates super-simple herbal ingredients like clove, green tea, rooibos, cinnamon, and nutmeg, with (as the name suggests) zero extraneous ingredients.
The simplicity and efficacy of the ingredients catapulted Zero Tea 14 Day Detox Tea to the top of our rankings
2. Total Tea Gentle Detox
Total Tea Gentle Detox is a great choice for an evening-time tea to improve your sleep and detox your gastrointestinal system.
The blend includes chamomile to improve sleep quality, cinnamon to soothe your stomach, and senna to act as a natural and gentle laxative.
Ginger and echinacea add to its immune-boosting power, but ultimately Total Tea Gentle Detox is a digestive system cleanser, and a good one at that.
3. Everlong Detox Tea
Everlong Detox Tea comes in a two-pack with an evening blend and a morning blend. The ingredients are simple and effective, without questionable or extraneous herbal extracts.
The main focus in this blend is antioxidant power, so if you are primarily looking to cut down on inflammation with your detox tea, this is the product for you.
4. Yogi Detox Tea
Yogi Detox Tea is a heavyweight in detox teas for good reason. It includes a robust, diverse blend of herbal extracts that are intended to aid the liver and the kidneys.
Because of this, it’s designed to be an all-purpose, all-body detox. The blend includes recognizable herbs like ginger, dandelion, and cardamom, as well as more obscure herbs like Japanese honeysuckle and Chinese skullcap root.
It won’t be as effective at specific goals, like a colon detox or weight loss, but the broad range of ingredients ensures you’ll improve your overall well-being and sense of health.
5. Baetea 14 Day Detox
Baetea is a 14-day detox program that’s designed to kick-start a weight loss program. From the blend of herbs included in the tea, it’s clear that weight loss and fat burning are the focus.
Key ingredients like garcinia cambogia, guarana seed, matcha tea, and green tea all provide powerful weight-loss capabilities.
6. FitTea 14 Day Detox
FitTea provides a two-week detox program that is best used to start a weight loss program. The tea features several key ingredients that are helpful with losing weight, including garcinia cambogia, green tea, and matcha.
These should have a good synergistic effect, allowing the ingredients to compliment each other and effectively burn fat, limit your appetite, and set your weight loss program on the right track.
7. Triple Leaf Tea Detox
Triple Leaf Tea Detox is formulated in keeping with the tenets of traditional Chinese medicine, so its ingredients are vastly different from anything else you’ll find on the market.
The degree to which it’s helpful for its stated goals (purifying the body and promoting a more peaceful state of mind) depends on how well the traditional Chinese medicine approach works for you.
8. SkinnyFit Detox
SkinnyFit Detox is an energy-focused detox tea that incorporates green tea, matcha, and guarana for a caffeinated and energy-infused blend. It’s great for some “get up and go” in the morning, but the higher than average caffeine content (plus guarana) means it is not well-suited for the evenings.
This detox tea is also a little weak when it comes to herbal supplements for the GI tract, but if you want it for better energy levels, it’s a good pick.
9. Pink Stork Detox Tea
Pink Stork includes some pretty solid compounds for promoting weight loss, like green tea ginger, but these aside it’s not the most versatile detox tea out there.
Aside from a few diuretics like stinging nettle and dandelion, there isn’t a whole lot of innovative ingredients in this detox tea, so unless your focus is a simple, weight-loss oriented detox tea, you might be better-served elsewhere.
10. v-Tea t-Detox
The detox tea from v-Tea is blended with several rare or uncommon herbal ingredients. Herbs like tulsi, fenugreek, and nettle leaf aren’t likely to be found too many other places.
While it doesn’t have the key ingredients for a weight loss detox or a digestive system detox, you may find it helpful for overall health and well-being when other detox teas with mainstream ingredients fail.
Category winners
Best detox tea overall: Zero Tea 14 Day Detox Tea
This detox tea is our favorite thanks to its all-natural formulation. With simple ingredients like cinnamon, green tea, cloves, and orange peel, it’s a versatile and effective detox tea regardless of your use case.
Best detox tea for women: Yogi Detox Tea
Women benefit from Yogi Detox Tea’s stimulant-free blend that includes a versatile mix of herbal extracts like dandelion, sarsaparilla, and rhubarb. Whether your goal is better digestive health or higher levels of antioxidants, Yogi Detox Tea has you covered.
Best detox tea for bloating: Everlong Detox Tea
Everlong Detox Tea’s multi-ingredient approach is great for fighting bloating: it uses dandelion and ginger in the morning to discourage water retention, and senna and pu’erh tea in the evening to encourage regular bowel movements.
Best detox tea for weight loss: Total Tea Detox Guayusa Energy Tea
While detox tea alone won’t make you hit your weight loss goals, it can be great for kicking off a new dieting program. Total Tea Detox is great for jump-starting weight loss thanks to the all-natural caffeine sourced from the guayusa plant—it’s perfectly suited for boosting fat oxidation and suppressing hunger pangs.
Best detox tea for water retention: Everlong Detox Tea
If your body is retaining a lot of water, Everlong Detox Tea might be the right option for you. Its inclusion of ample amounts of dandelion root gives it a diuretic effect, helping to shed excess water from your body.
Best detox tea without laxatives: Zero Tea 14 Day Detox Tea
Laxatives like senna are great if you are looking to cleanse your gastrointestinal tract, but if constipation or digestive problems aren’t the reason you’re taking detox tea, go for Zero Tea 14 Day Detox Tea. Its all-natural approach does not include any laxatives, making it easy on your stomach.
Who should buy detox tea?
If you are looking for a supplement to jump-start a new health routine, a detox tea might be right for you.
While no short-term supplement is going to be a long-term solution for overall health, many people find that a detox tea can help them kick-start a better, healthier set of habits for long-term health.
A detox tea with the right ingredients can help you boost your metabolism, overcome gastrointestinal problems like constipation and bloating, and help suppress your appetite.
Hopefully these changes will make it easier to transition to a routine that’s better for long-term health even after you come off your detox tea.
Detox teas are not for everyone: some ingredients carry a risk of liver or kidney damage, though these risks are largely extrapolated from case series or case reports in the medical literature.
It’s also uncertain whether blending many ingredients together leads to an additive benefit: for example, several studies have examined green tea extract, dandelion root, and ginger, but always in isolation.
Blending these ingredients together in a detox tea might create additive benefits, but it’s not certain. If you are a bit more adventurous with your supplements, or if you are at your wits end when it comes to trying to get into a healthier routine, a detox tea could be right up your alley.
How we ranked
Detox tea is a pretty broad category of supplement, so we imposed a few criteria to narrow the field. First, we only looked at detox teas that were designed explicitly for short-term use.
So-called “daily detox” products that are intended for long-term use are much harder to evaluate because of the increased potential for the slow accumulation of toxins like heavy metal, which can be found in trace amounts in some herbal ingredients.
While the products on our rankings range in their intended use duration, none of them are supposed to be used indefinitely. Second, we looked only at multi-ingredient teas only.
While there’s a good case to be made that green tea or matcha tea, for example, are legitimate “detox teas” in their own right, we only focused on products that aim to give you the benefits of multiple ingredients at the same time.
Next up, we sought out products that contain powerful active ingredients that contribute to the most popular goals associated with taking a detox tea: weight loss, improved liver or kidney health, increased energy levels, and decreased appetite.
Ingredients like green tea, ginger, dandelion root, and garcinia cambogia were all high on this list. Not every detox tea needed to contain all or even most of these key ingredients, but we dropped any products from consideration that did not have at least one or two potent detox ingredients.
Finally, we screened products based on the dose and potential efficacy of their active ingredients.
Products that were transparent about the precise amount of each ingredient included in the detox tea formulation were rewarded, while products that obscured their ingredients using “proprietary blends” were penalized. The top products remaining became our best detox teas of the year.
Benefits
If you are feeling bloated and constipated, or you want to jump-start a weight loss program, or you just feel generally run-down, a detox tea might be able to help. Broadly speaking, detox teas address one of three different goals. Some detox teas act like a colon cleanse, helping fight constipation, bloating, and stomach discomfort.
Others are focused on helping to promote weight loss, so they contain supplements that help increase your metabolism, or decrease your appetite, and essentially can act like fat burners.
Finally, a third category of detox tea targets overall health and well-being, and attempts to help your liver and kidneys increase their ability to remove toxins from your body.
When it comes to improving your gastrointestinal health, there are a few key ingredients to look for in a detox tea. First among these is senna, the natural laxative that plays a central role in any digestive detox tea.
According to researchers at Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität Mainz in Germany, senna is a superior natural laxative to many other pharmaceutical and supplemental solutions to constipation (1).
In their study, the researchers compared how senna acts on the level of the gastrointestinal tract to increase the mobility of solid waste.
When compared to the other laxatives that were being tested, the researchers found that senna–a well-tolerated, naturally-derived laxative–outperformed the other compounds under consideration. While the precise mechanism still isn’t clear, senna increases the rate at which solid waste moves through the colon.
Senna is also well-known for having fewer side effects than other constipation supplements. A research study published in 2006 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology also compared senna to a medical-grade laxative used to prepare patients having a colonoscopy (2).
While senna was not quite as effective, it had significantly fewer side effects, and was much better tolerated by patients (for example, the patients strongly disliked the taste of the alternative laxative.
Despite not outperforming the alternative laxative, senna was still deemed an effective option for cleaning out the colon.
For getting a head-start on weight loss, detox teas for this purpose should include something to increase your body’s metabolism, such as green tea or black tea.
Additional weight loss supplements like garcinia cambogia may be useful too. The combination of green and black (or green and oolong) teas is particularly useful because black tea can provide some additional caffeine to work alongside the active compounds in green tea to increase fat burning (3).
Green tea also acts as an appetite suppressant in its own right; one study published in the Nutrition Journal found that a group of people who consumed green tea with a meal reported greater fullness and satiety compared to a control group (4).
One of the broadest and most difficult to analyze categories of detox teas are those that aim for “general detoxification”–they intend to boost your overall well-being, sometimes by assisting your liver and kidneys with their normal toxic compound removal duties.
There is some evidence that dandelion root can help with detoxing. One study, published by researchers in Korea, found that rats fed a dandelion supplement (a very common ingredient in detox teas) was able to protect the rats from liver damage induced by toxic compounds (5).
While this indicates both that dandelion could be a useful detox ingredient and also that herbal ingredients in general show promise as sources of detox compounds, there’s still a long ways to go before the scientific research catches up with what’s available now in detox teas.
Detox tea that contains ginger could be beneficial for your liver. One of the consequences of an unhealthy diet over the long run can be liver damage in the form of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. In this disease, damage accumulates in the liver because of scarring and inflammation caused in part by fat deposits.
These, in turn, are thought to be related to the hallmarks of an unhealthy diet, like excessive sugar and refined carbohydrate consumption.
Because the initial stages of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease are marked by inflammation and insulin dysregulation, some researchers think that ginger could help fight both of these causes, thanks to its anti-inflammatory properties.
One scientific article that forwarded this proposition was published in 2011 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology (6).
The article cites numerous studies on the behavior of ginger at the cellular level inside the body, indicating that ginger interacts with insulin, pro-inflammatory cells, and cellular signalling pathways that help control excessive lipid (fat) buildups inside the body.
If this hypothesis holds up, using ginger in a detox tea could help benefit your liver. Fortunately, some research has already put the ginger/liver hypothesis to the test.
A pilot study published in the journal Hepatitis Monthly by researchers in Iran recruited 44 people with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and randomly assigned them into one of two groups (7).
The first group received a placebo supplement, while the second group received a ginger supplement. Both groups were followed for the next 12 weeks and the researchers evaluated their liver health, as measured by a wide range of blood tests.
The researchers found that the ginger supplement led to significant improvements in liver function on several of the tests, though not all of them.
The findings here support the idea that ginger can improve liver health if you have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, so its inclusion in detox teas make sense from a liver health perspective.
Side Effects
Detox teas for digestive tract cleansing shouldn’t be used for long periods of time.
Some case studies, such as one published in 2005 in the medical journal Acta Gastro-enterologica Belgica, describe cases of chronic liver damage that have occurred in conjunction with longstanding, high-dose use of herbal laxatives like senna (8).
This shouldn’t be terribly surprising, though; any laxative used to relieve constipation should not be taken for long periods of time, lest your body become reliant on it.
With weight loss detox teas, the main thing to look out for is too much caffeine, especially if you are using them in conjunction with other weight loss supplements, energy drinks, or coffee.
If you are sensitive to the effects of caffeine, try to avoid detox teas with black, green, and oolong tea in them in the evening, as they may interfere with your sleep.
Side effects of general-purpose detox teas are hard to characterize given how many ingredients they have, and how little research there is on the more obscure ingredients.
Your best bet if you are worried about side effects is to stick with the popular, top-rated products, because if these had any adverse effects, they’d have been discovered already by other consumers.
Recommended Dosage
With detox teas, determining dosage is hard to do beyond what’s recommended by the manufacturer’s advice.
With any herbal tea, the dosage delivered into the teacup is going to depend not just on the concentration of the active ingredients in the tea bags, but also on the temperature of the water when the tea bag is steeped as well as how long the tea bag is allowed to be steeped.
Follow the directions closely, since this is likely how the manufacturer determined the optimal dosage of the ingredients when formulating their detox tea.
With detox teas, it’s usually not a good idea to reuse tea satchels.
With a typical green or black tea, this is fine, but most of the active ingredients will be extracted out of the satchel during the first use of a detox tea when it’s used as directed, so you won’t be getting any additional benefit.
Especially with digestive and weight loss detox teas, don’t exceed the manufacturer’s daily recommendations.
These are constructed to keep your intake of ingredients like laxatives and stimulants within the most effective dosage levels.
FAQ
Q: Do detox teas really work?
A: The potential goals or benefits that you might hope to get from a detox tea can span a wide variety of outcomes, so it helps to be more specific when it comes to defining what “works” and what doesn’t with regards to detox tea.
If your expectations are realistic, like having a detox tea help reduce your appetite, increase short-term weight loss, boost your energy levels, and improve your metabolic health, then there is a good chance a high quality detox tea can work for you.
However, if you expect drastic weight loss, massive improvements in your overall health, and a complete reversal of the negative effects of years of a poor-quality diet, you’re likely to get disappointed: a detox tea (or any other short-term solution) can only do so much.
Q: What is the best kind of detox tea for weight loss?
A: When it comes to weight loss, you should look for ingredients that accomplish two related tasks: first, you want ingredients in a detox tea that increase your energy expenditure, and second, you want ingredients that reduce your appetite.
Some popular and powerful ingredients for detox tea, like green tea, accomplish both of these; others, like garcinia cambogia, focus on just one.
Since weight loss is a matter of energy intake versus energy expenditure, working both sides of this equation can help you lose more weight.
Of course, since a detox tea routine is only short-term, your aim should not be to rely solely on the detox tea ingredients for weight loss, but to leverage the effects of detox tea to jump-start healthier habits that you can continue in the long run, like smaller portions at meals, a healthier diet, and a more active lifestyle.
It’s a lot easier to ease into habits like this if a detox tea is helping you reduce your appetite and feel like you have more energy throughout the day.
If you are really looking for a solution for weight loss, you might want to check out thermogenics, appetite suppressants, or more general-purpose weight loss pills.
Q: Does detox tea help with constipation?
A: It depends on the specific formulation of the detox tea, but a detox tea that contains a natural laxative or digestive aid like senna (often found in colon cleanses) is a good way to address constipation and other gastrointestinal tract issues.
Some other herbal supplements, like stinging nettle extract or ginger root, are thought to help with constipation too, but the evidence is far stronger for senna.
You may find that the mere fact that you are taking in more fluids helps to improve your constipation, a benefit to a detox tea regimen that’s far less discussed than it perhaps ought to be.
Q: What is the best time to drink detox tea?
A: The best time to drink a detox tea varies somewhat depending on what your goals are. If you want to use a detox tea as a part of a weight loss program, you should drink detox tea fairly early during the day: no later than mid-morning.
That’s because many of the benefits of detox tea have to do with increasing your energy levels and decreasing your appetite.
These effects only help with weight loss if you drink your detox tea early in the day, which should lead to lower caloric intake at lunch and dinner, and more physical activity throughout the day.
If you are looking for some of the more general cleansing and health-boosting properties from compounds like ginger or goji berry, you may benefit more from drinking detox tea at night to avoid any interactions with foods in your diet.
An evening detox tea routine might also be preferable if you are using a detox tea as a way to address constipation: the laxative effect of a detox tea can work overnight, restoring regularity to your morning bowel movements.
One thing to keep in mind, though: if you are going to drink detox tea at night, make sure your detox tea does not contain caffeine-heavy ingredients like oolong or black tea. These will interfere with your ability to get high-quality sleep.
Q: How can you make your own detox tea?
A: Making your own detox tea at home is very similar to making your own herbal tea: all you need to do is decide on the specific ingredients that you want, and make individual steeping bags.
Even simple homemade formulations based on dandelion root, green, oolong, or black tea, and ginger can be quite effective and easy to make.
The drawback to making your own detox tea is that you don’t have access to some of the more exotic or arcane ingredients that you’ll find in commercial products, but you do get direct control over the ingredients, so if you are looking for a simple detox tea, making your own might be preferable to commercial blends.
However, if you want to take full advantage of a broad range of herbal ingredients, a pre-mixed blend is the way to go.
Q: How often should you drink detox tea?
A: Most detox teas are formulated to be drank at least once per day, for a set amount of time (say, 14 days). It’s not a good idea to drink a detox tea more often than recommended, or to repeat detox regimens back to back.
That’s because some detox tea ingredients can be harmful in high doses, or when taken for long periods of time. Many of the worrying medical case studies that report cases of liver or kidney damage occurs in people who have been taking detox tea for several weeks at a time, or in higher than recommended doses (though notably, some have occured when detox tea is taken at normal doses).
Q: How do you do a green tea detox?
A: Green tea is somewhat unique among detox tea ingredients in that it has a robust body of scientific literature that supports its use long-term.
While it’s generally not a good idea to use detox tea indefinitely, green tea in particular is an exception to this rule. In fact, to “detox” using green tea, all you have to do is add several cups of green tea to your daily routine.
You can continue this high dose of green tea indefinitely; the scientific evidence indicates that even very high intakes of green tea are associated with substantial health benefits.
Q: What kind of tea gives you a good colon cleanse?
A: For a colon cleanse, you’ll want to specifically look for a detox tea that has a natural laxative ingredient like senna, and perhaps other ingredients that bring about an anti-inflammatory effect.
Reducing inflammation is one way to fight back against the kinds of gastrointestinal problems that lead people to seek out a colon cleanse, and of course senna is an excellent laxative to fight constipation and a backlog of waste products in your gastrointestinal tract.
Related articles
- Juice cleanse
- Matcha tea
- Dandelion root
- Apple cider vinegar
- Diuretics
- Colon cleanse
- Garcinia cambogia
- Thermogenic
- Appetite suppressant
- Green tea extract
- Goji berry
Recap
When chosen and used correctly, detox teas can help improve your health and well-being.
A tea formulated for the gastrointestinal tract, ideally that includes senna, can help fight constipation, bloating, and stomach pain when used for short periods.
A weight loss detox tea should include thermogenic and fat-burning ingredients, perhaps as well as an appetite suppressant.
It’s harder to evaluate the proper ingredients for a general health and well-being detox, but you’ll know within a week or two whether it’s having the intended effect.
For BodyNutrition‘s #1 detox tea recommendation, click here.