Noni Tea is very useful herba tea

History of Noni

Morinda citrifolia (called Nony, Mengkudu, Pache, Kankudo, Tibah etc. in Indonesia, and Noni by Hawaiian inhabitants) is originated in Maluku Islands of Indonesia (Ridley) and both of fruits and leaves have been utilized as alternative and traditional medicines as Jamu in Indonesia for around 6,000 years.

The matured fruits are used to produce juice which is now so popular in the world.

(However, people without history using the noni fruits as foods and/or medicines do not know how to make juice. They often harvest the immature fruits and produce blackish noni juice because of improper knowledge and little availability. This kind of noni juice is toxic. So, we have to pay attention when choosing noni juice.)

Noni leaves are dark greenish color, 20~25 cm in width and 40~45 cm in length, and give no cheese-like smell like fruits and slight bitter taste.

In addition to medicinal purposes, the leaves are cooked for fried rice (Nashi goren in Indonesia ) and soup (Tom yamukun in Thailand ) and utilized for wrapping cooked fish,

Traditional use of noni leaves in Indonesia

 We believe that knowledge and experience and wisdom of ancestors are best teacher than modern sciences. We owe a lot from them and have no way to follow them

Noni tea production
Indonesian people have no history to enjoy the leaves as tea.

Therefore, &K Laboratories Inc., Japan tried to manufacture noni leave tea in cooperation with Indonesian Institute of Science and Japanese reputable tea manufacturer, and finally developed and launched noni tea in Japan, in 2003.

Noni tea bag and leave tea have been manufactured with special technology as to give unique taste and flavor, without fermentation.

Noni tea bag is packed by filling inert nitrogen gas to prevent the tea from oxidation.

We believe that M&K is the first company to produce quality noni tea in the world.

Organic Noni tea

Noni leaves are organic products from naturally grown trees in very clean and non-polluted areas in Central Jawa (refer to attached document).
No residual pesticides are detected.
Because of no use of synthetic chemical fertilizers, nitrite (NO₃ ion) concentration in noni tea and leaves is quite low compared to Japanese green tea.　Higher nitrite content is associated with disorders of erythrocytes and gastric neoplasma.

 NO₃ ppm

  Nutritional value of Indonesian Noni tea (per 100g)

 As you can find in the above table, Indonesian Noni tea has higher nutritional values compared to Polynesian Noni tea ( Tahiti ), especially in protein, lipid, saccharides, minerals (as ash) and vitamins.

It is noteworthy that Indonesia Noni tea contains no caffeine and lower tannin and is likely nutritious in comparison with green tea.

Due to higher lipid content, we can see lipid droplets floating on the surface of decoction well-boiled as same as coffee. 

We have almost complete analyses for minerals and vitamins. Their results also reveal Indonesian Noni tea is convinced to be novel healthy tea.

Diuretic effect of Indonesian Noni tea

In spite of no caffeine, there are many testimonial reports that Indonesia Noni tea helped difficulty of urination and frequency of patients with hypertrophic prostate and incontinence.

We do not know the mode of pharmacological actions on Noni tea. However, according to pharmacologists and urologists, higher blood circulation in the mucosa of uro-genital tissues may enhance smooth urination.

Anti-DM effect by Indonesian Noni tea

Using animal model of diabetes mellitus (DM) by injection of streptozotocin, the effect of noni leaves was investigated by us.
Blood glucose levels of the rats raised after the injection, but pre-treatment and continuous ingestion with noni leaves inhibited an increase in blood glucose compared to the control group. 

We estimate from histopathological study that oxidation of βcells in the pancreas is prohibited by Noni leaves. One more possibility is it may prevent glucose absorption from the gut.

Anti-cancer effect of Noni leaves

It was reported by groups of Kyoto University , Kinki University and University in Thai that Noni leaves can work as inhibitor of promotion in cancer development. They concluded that longevity in aged people in south-Asian countries may be due to daily ingestion of such kind of vegetables/fruits rich in anti-cancer promotion ingredients.

These ingredients are determined to be Iridoido derivatives, such kind of asperuloside and citrifolidoside.

These information initiated me to develop Noni leave tea to help and give relaxation to patients with cancer or under cancer therapy.

So, Noni leave tea is now called “ Healing Tea” in Japan .

Anti-obesity of Indonesian Noni tea and leaves

It is said that Noni leaves have lipid catabolism action resulting in a decrease in stored lipid. Diuretic action works for anti-obesity in synergic way with lipid catabolism.

We recommend that used or unused Noni tea shall be taken to enhance slimming.

There are some recipes for cooking such as fried rice, bread, rice cake, sticky rice etc. created by Japanese consumers. Please make your own recipes using Noni leaves.
Residual Noni tea leaves can be given to dogs who are fond of them. Or you can put them to garden flowers as natural fertilizer.

Therapy for Sprain by Noni tea leaves

Once you have sprain in your wrist or ankle by tennis, incidental stumbling or anything else, you put cooking oil (preferably virgin coconut oil) to Noni tea leaves and mix them, and apply a bandage to damaged part with the mixture.
In the following day, you may not feel painful and swelling disappears.

This method with Noni tea leaves can be applied to rheumatoid and joint pain.

Plain mineral water soaked with Noni tea bag

From our experiment, one Noni tea bag can change the plain mineral water to better taste (but we could not apply this to RO water commonly consumed in USA ).

You just put one Noni tea bag into 500ml pet bottled mineral water and keep standing it in the refrigerator for one night and you can enjoy good-feeling Noni tea bottled water.

It is not recommendable to apply any other beverage tasted with any materials.

Toshiaki NISHIGAKI, Pharmacist, Ph.D.

Research fellow, School of Medicine , Shinshu University
President of the Republic of Buah Merah
Chair Person of Tokyo Noni Research Center