- The best teas for a sore throat include green tea, slippery elm tea, and ginger tea.
- Licorice tea can help dissolve mucus and coat your throat to prevent irritation when you swallow.
- Green tea can decrease inflammation and contains antioxidants that help you fight off infection.
- Visit Insider's Health Reference library for more advice.
Drinking warm liquids can be comforting when you're sick, and may help soothe an irritated throat.
But sipping certain herbal teas like licorice root or green tea may have even greater benefits — like reducing throat swelling and helping to clear mucus.
Here are five types of tea that may offer relief when you have a sore throat.
1. Licorice root tea
"There is some research to support that licorice may eliminate phlegm and mucus and act as an overall coating agent to help soothe a sore throat," says Keri Gans, MS, a registered dietician in private practice.
In fact, there are three key substances found in licorice root that may help a sore throat:
- Liquilitin and liquiritigenin act as expectorants, meaning they loosen mucus and make it easier to cough up.
- Glycyrrhizin acts as a demulcent, meaning it provides a protective coating over your throat that may prevent irritation when you swallow.
A 2021 study looked at surgery patients who had a breathing tube inserted in their throat during the procedure. When they woke up, the patients gargled a licorice or green tea solution — both liquids helped reduce throat soreness, compared with patients who didn't do the gargle.
2. Green tea
Green tea contains powerful antioxidant compounds called polyphenols that may help your immune system fight off cold and flu viruses, says Samantha Cassetty, MS, a registered dietician and co-author of Sugar Shock.
"Green tea is also known to have anti-inflammatory properties which may help to alleviate discomfort of a sore throat," Gans says. These properties come from a compound called epigallocatechin-3-gallate, which reduces inflammatory proteins in your body.
This is important because sore throat is most often caused by inflammation of the pharynx, or back of your throat due to a cold or flu.
To get benefits, you can either drink green tea or try the gargle method. "If you want to try gargling with green tea, make sure it's warm rather than hot," Cassetty says, as the heat may burn your throat and irritate it even further.
It's best to gargle green tea for 30 seconds at a time, and if it's helpful, you can gargle again two hours later.
3. Ginger tea
Ginger root contains compounds called gingerols and shogoals that have pain relief and anti-inflammatory properties, which can soothe a sore throat, says Cassetty.
In addition to being soothing, ginger may also help you kick a cold or flu — "some scientific studies suggest that ginger may have antimicrobial properties that can help fight viral infections that may lead to a sore throat," Gans says.
However, many of these studies use ginger extract to treat viruses, which may have a higher dose of antiviral compounds than ginger tea.
More research is needed to determine if ginger tea, specifically, can fight off illness, but "there's no harm to trying ginger tea when you're battling a sore throat," says Cassetty.
4. Slippery elm tea
Slippery elm is named for its inner layer of bark, which contains a substance called mucilage that turns into a slick gel when mixed with water. When you eat or drink it, mucilage can create a soothing and protective coating over your throat.
A small 2004 study found that people with throat inflammation who drank a slippery elm, licorice, and marshmallow-based tea four to six times per day for up to seven days had significantly less throat pain than people who drank a placebo tea.
You can buy slippery elm tea at some health food stores or find it in pharmacies as an ingredient in Throat Coat tea.
5. Marshmallow tea
Marshmallow root may help a sore throat because it also contains high levels of soothing mucilage.
Marshmallow root may also help to loosen any mucus in your throat, Gans says. Looser mucus means you can cough it up more easily, which may help relieve a throat-irritating dry cough.
A preliminary 2018 study surveyed people who took marshmallow root lozenges or syrup to treat dry cough. Within 10 minutes of the treatment, the majority of people reported that their throats felt less irritated and they had a lower urge to cough.
Insider's takeaway
Sore throat is a common issue during cold and flu season, and drinking tea may be a helpful natural remedy.
"A warm drink like tea can help soothe throat irritation, and compounds in tea might help calm inflammation and relieve pain," Cassetty says.
However, more research is still needed to investigate how tea can work as a medical treatment — "a question to ask is whether the dose of the herb is actually high enough in the tea to reap the benefit," Gans says.