Can Tea Tame Menopause Symptoms? My Experiment with Magic Hour’s Divine Timing Collection
I first discovered Magic Hour Tea during the pandemic when, for my writing work, I had a Zoom with the owner, Zhena Muzyka . She’s a mom, I’m a mom. Neither of us were 30 anymore, and we were both surely facing perimenopause . She follows astrology in a spiritual, divine-feminine way, and I love all of that witchy nonsense. She sent me a box of her organic, fair-trade teas to try and one, Bohemian Breakfast , wowed me. It’s a unique black tea, complicated and delicious and able to rev me up with no jitteriness. I regularly order the big refill bags and have been having it at breakfast most days for about four years now.
I was thrilled in January when I had an excuse to pass through Ojai, California, where Magic Hour has a brick-and-mortar shop. I bought my fave tea, tried another flavor while I was there, and saw Zhena herself. I fangirled! It was worth embarrassing myself to tell her how much I love her work. I don’t think she remembered me from that Zoom, but she was gracious all the same.
If you are a Magic Hour customer, you get emails. Some invite you to Zhena’s online meetups, where she pulls a tarot card. Others are about sales. And others are about new products. One recently caught my eye, promoting the The Divine Timing Collection “for perimenopause and beyond.”
There are plenty of experts who say that drinking tea can relieve stress , so I wasn’t doubting that, but using tea to help prevent hot flashes and other perimenopause symptoms was new to me. I ordered the Divine Timing Tea Bundle for $37, threw in a refill of my Bohemian Breakfast, and waited for the right moment to give the teas a try.
Magic Hour Tea Review
Magic Hour doesn’t use tea bags. The multi-ingredient blends, created by Muzyka herself, are sold loose-leaf. Early on I got a tea strainer that I use for them. I fill the strainer about a quarter full to brew one pot of tea.
Magic Hour ships via ground, and it’s a small operation, so for me, on the East Coast, it can take a week or more to receive an order. In this world, we’ve gotten used to overnight shipping, but these teas aren’t necessarily coming to you on an airplane — and in my opinion, they’re totally worth the wait.
But how do the Divine Timing teas for menopause stack up against my beloved Bohemian Breakfast tea, and do they actually alleviate symptoms? I tested all four teas in the collection to find out.
I opened this one on a rainy Saturday afternoon as I was slogging through work (the life of a writer). Divine Timing Vitality is a green tea for energy, with cinnamon and peppermint to pep you up. It smells fantastic as it steeps, like the potpourri my mom set out in the ’80s.
The instructions on the back of all four of the packets suggested I enjoy tea “before bedtime.” I would say don’t do that with this green tea. It perks you up. Not like a black tea, but still. Also, this particular packet suggested steeping for 5 to 7 minutes, but I’ve learned that green tea gets too bitter for me if I let it go that long, so I went with 3 minutes, personally.
I enjoyed the taste and I love how Magic Hour describes it as helping “your body respond to stress with resilience rather than exhaustion.” It aims to provide steady energy, rather than a sugar high or caffeine jolt, mid-day. It can do that, but my true confession is that I also had it with some cake, so that wasn’t great of me. (My sugar addiction is real.) Still, if you love green tea, and prefer light caffeine so you’re not bouncing around, this is for you.
I broke out Divine Timing Calm at 9pm one night when there was family visiting and thus the potential for a lot of feelings . Right away I thought I smelled chocolate, but the ingredients and the flavor notes don’t list it. The ingredients do include spearmint, peppermint and green cardamom. I poured cups for my cousins and they swore they both smelled and tasted vanilla, which is also not named on the bag. But suffice to say this delicious tea had something dessert-ish about it.
It was calming, too, though it’s hard to tell how much was just the act of sipping hot tea after 9pm and how much was due to the tea blend itself. I do have a friend who drinks mint tea exclusively and it seems to keep her calm, so I’m willing to say this tea did its job. I love the idea that I could break it out during a stressful day — it’s much more socially acceptable to sip tea rather than bolting and taking a walk, or excusing myself to go hide from everyone!
The website offers a very Zhena-like description of this tea, which is that “spearmint provides immediate relief, while a synergistic blend of adaptogens—Shatavari, Ashwagandha, Rhodiola, and Reishi—work deeply to nurture your nervous system and hormonal balance. Liver-supporting herbs milk thistle and dandelion root gently release stored tension, allowing frustration to dissolve and clarity to emerge.” That’s a lot, but it also tracks — one taste and you know it’s got far more going on than a mint tea from the grocery store.
Anyone who has ever seen loose-leaf chamomile tea can identify Divine Timing Rest by just peeking into the bag. I steeped it for a good 10 minutes because in my experience, an herbal chamomile tastes best that way, and I also like it when the water has a chance to cool a bit.
I had this at midnight on a night when both me and my husband (also a freelance worker) were still up, trying to finish projects. I knew we had to go to sleep, but also knew both of our minds were racing, so I poured us each a cup. He loved it even more than I did. And after a cup he agreed he had to shut his computer down so we could go to bed.
Like the other Divine Timing teas, this is not one-note. There’s lavender, lemon balm and Ashwagandha (an herb used to combat stress and anxiety) in it, and many other ingredients, too. According to Magic Hour, it’s “for those nights when you long to drift effortlessly into dreams. Naturally sedative. Hormonally supportive. Deliciously dreamy.” Zzzzz.
This one felt like the biggest promise: a tea to get a handle on a woman’s internal thermostat. Divine Timing Balance is also the tea that most defies easy categorization — the others are all dialed-in versions of green, mint and chamomile respectively, but Balance is in it’s own lane entirely. Magic Hour lists some flavor notes as spearmint, lemon verbena, rose petals and a hint of sage.
Opening it up, it looked like a packet of beautiful flowers, as you can see in the photo above of the tea poured onto my counter. It tastes floral to me — I am not even sure how else to describe it. I once had a blooming tea , which was more about the unfolding performance than bodily benefits, and its taste was similar, so that’s as near as I can come.
Did it steady my body temperature? It seemed to. I don’t get hot flashes like I used to now that I am on hormone replacement therapy , but I chose to drink this on a day when I was in an office doing some physical work and going in and out of meetings. It’s the kind of day when I can sometimes get flushed, but drinking the flower tea may have helped. It’s hard to know!
In the Magic Hour notes, it says that with this tea, Shatavari helps balance hormonal fluctuations, cooling herbs provide relief from temperature dysregulation and that sage leaf has been shown in studies to reduce hot flashes . It’s for “moments when you need to feel cool, collected, and in harmony with your changing body.”
Is Magic Hour Tea for Menopause Worth It?
In my menopausal journey, nothing I eat or drink has made nearly as much of a difference as starting HRT. That said, not everyone wants to take hormones. If you’d prefer to handle your symptoms naturally, tea is a fantastic tool for your toolbox.
It’s good for someone like me, too, who could use a couple of extra tricks at tough times. I also drink tea anyway, so there’s very little reason to not enjoy teas that can help me be calmer, better-rested and hormonally regulated! Plus: I already love this woman-owned tea company’s organic products. In my book, they’re worth the money.
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