Anti-aging protocol

 

This is something I've ended up discussing a good bit over the past few years, one of many subjects I've become interested in.  My fasting practice ties to an interest in this, even though it started as a result of a chance contact saying that it would bring about spiritual practice benefits (and maybe it did?  hard to say, since that is hard to track).

I'm no expert on avoiding aging effects, but I am a good example of how it can work out.  I'm 56 now and could pass for 40, or maybe even 30-something, and I am active to say the least.  I've just switched my runs back to 12 km per outing, not quite at 3 times per week, but it will level off to at least 30 km / 20 miles per week.  It's hard to justify that I'm more active in general, or more flexible related to being open to new experiences and learning, the less explicit themes related to aging.  It seems so, to me, but it's hard to support that.

56 compared to 16, but I think his genetic potential might be even better

It's strange using yourself as an example like that.  The same general theme came up related to discussing intelligence on Quora before, a favorite topic earlier on.  I'll skip passing on an IQ stat but mine has been tested at significantly higher than the 130 cut-off for grade-school gifted program participation.  People there--Quora--would always claim "intelligent people are less socially oriented," or something such, prone to whatever other malaise, but to me a lot of that ends up being hearsay patterns that don't necessarily hold up in most cases.  Intelligence is like any other aptitude; it can couple with a broad range of personal characters or other aptitudes and weaknesses.  

The nerd or geek persona is separate from intelligence; the two themes may tend to correspond, but they are not tightly causally connected.  Maybe people embracing those character or self-identification themes tend to be above average in intelligence, but it's not as if one is a sign of the other, or that intelligence leads directly to preference of those forms of experience (an interest in sci-fi or computers, etc.).  Somehow it all naturally groups together, that people with certain capacities tend to explore using them in similar ways, but there is no necessary connection.  Plenty of people with sports aptitude are couch potatoes, and plenty of people with very limited athletic potential are still active in sports anyway, they just couldn't excel at the highest levels of competition.

Back to the aging theme; I was responding to this question on Reddit:

If you are aging, what if any supplements did you take in order that you thought might reverse aging or made you feel decades younger again? I mean do you have a sip of certain juice a day or take something to make yourself feel decades younger?

Who isn't aging?  Of course people there recommended diet and exercise, as I did.  But I added some less standard thoughts and practices.

Nothing like that [referring to the magic bullet / take a pill potential], but I can suggest things I know work, for sure, and a couple that might help that are less certain:

exercise: you should try to get at least 3 hours of medium intensity exercise per week. If you want to use weightlifting as this input, to double up on improving muscle conditioning and joint health, you can just increase overall intensity by rushing the sets. Some input should be cardio though; intense beyond walking pace input.

sleep: 8 hours per day is an absolute minimum, unless you somehow don't need much sleep. Coupling a bit of extra sleep with bumping up exercise input will change everything, along with diet change.

diet: cut out processed foods, sugar, junk foods, fast food, unhealthy snacks, etc. Eat natural foods, meats, vegetables and fruits, some whole-grain starch input. Nuts and beans can help with keeping protein intake up, which is important for exercise recovery. You probably don't need to supplement much if your diet is great, but taking a multivitamin couldn't hurt, and some basics like extra magnesium and D.

drugs, cigarettes, alcohol: get away from ingesting any.

tea (onto less certain input): I drink lots of varied tea, of good quality, and that may make a difference (I'm holding up great for being 56). Lots of the polyphenols are probably helpful, along with mineral input. People claim green tea is best for heart health (cardiovascular health), but I think drinking diverse versions would be better, black, green, oolong, sheng pu'er, some hei cha, etc.

goji berry: I eat a little of this daily, re-hydrated dried versions soaked in hot water for some minutes. The extra vitamin A (beta carotine) and xeaxanthin might be most helpful. It's probably good for eye health to also take in a good bit of lutein, but eating leafy green vegetables would cover that.

fasting: this should probably be back in the "certain" grouping. Fasting for 3 to 5 days at a time, at least 4 times per year, could change everything related to aging experience. I think my greying hair reversed mainly because of this input; it had been partly grey, and now isn't. Brain health seems to also improve, mental clarity and memory, which is difficult to achieve.

from 2024, but I don't have many clear photos of myself

Expanding on that:

What about new types of supplements anti-aging gurus promote?  Maybe those could work.  I wouldn't know, since I'm not on any.  I've not even had my hormone levels checked, a far earlier and more basic starting point than taking up hormone inputs or exotic supplements.

What about specific exercise inputs, adjusted sleep forms, less developed supplementation (taking zinc or turmeric / curcumin), specific diet forms (towards keto, Mediterranean, etc.)?  Sure, lots of approaches or inputs might be positive.  Per my understanding being quite active is the main helpful input, walking a lot, doing lots of low intensity activities, like laundry, cutting firewood, walking and hiking, swimming, and so on.  Even gardening, doing lots of very low intensity tasks, supports maintaining flexibility, by forcing you to move in different ways, with significant exposure level.

Getting some sun alone could be helpful.  It could be hard separating causes and effects, related to an input like that.  If someone were to swap out lying motionless while watching streamed video content for walking in the sun they'd never know which input helped most, the sun, the walking, or just not lying motionless.

I think diet alone has the most potential for change, especially if someone is on the standard American diet.  I've been moving back and forth between Bangkok and Honolulu and it takes a lot more focus to maintain a decent diet here (I'm in Hawaii just now).  In Bangkok fresh fruit is sold everywhere, exotic and delicious tropical versions, and even street foods can be relatively healthy, those literally sold from carts out on the sidewalks.  And inexpensive; it costs $20 for just about any meal in Hawaii, and probably over $30 if it's actually healthy.  

"Juicing" has lots of potential; drinking a bit of mixed vegetable juice every day, as the kind of extra bump the original question was asking about.  I practiced that at two different times in my life, probably over a period of at least a half dozen years, or maybe closer to a decade.  I was also a vegetarian for 17 years; maybe that helped?  Often with special diets the inclination to avoid some inputs, like over-eating, or junk foods, might be more important than what you actually consume.  A vegetarian and keto or carnivore diet might end up providing similar benefits for similar reasons, for those limitations, even though the apparent diet input is completely opposite.  Maintaining moderate body weight could be the overall main factor, in limiting aging, and eating a good diet and exercising could help lead to this, but from different directions.

Of course exercise inputs have plenty of potential too.  My health radically improved when I took up running, back at 50, and it improved again when I conditioned enough to ramp up training intensity and volume.  Swimming here in Hawaii has seemed to improve my muscle tone and flexibility quite a bit.  Doing yoga when I was 50 to 52 made a lot of difference, but Covid closed our local favorite yoga studio, so I let that go.

I swim in a swim lane between coral reefs not far from here

Fasting practice is especially promising.  It's too long a subject to add much more about why I think it helps (in a word, autophagy), or approaches that might be best.

I can't really place tea as a positive input either.  Research evidence of tea being quite healthy is very mixed in forms and results.  It probably is, but it's not the simplest thing to test for, and there is limited academic interest in reviewing that, since there is limited corporate commercial interest in leveraging tea sales as a health input.  In the US health care of sick people is far more profitable than preventing illness, especially through inexpensive food inputs.  There's a lot one might consider in relation to Traditional Chinese Medicine perspective on how tea is healthy, and in what optimum forms, which would vary by individual related to best fit or best overall balance.  I drank a lot of tisanes from the age of 22 up to 40; it's not just "real tea" that would have a lot of potential. 

Health risks related to tea are a potential concern, but there isn't a lot to look out for.  Caffeine intake should only go so far, and fluoride input is something to think through.  If you drink high quality tea (less mass-produced, chemical supported growth versions) risks from pesticides and heavy metal inputs are probably quite limited.  There are outliers claiming there are more significant, common risks to avoid, but in my opinion as long as you don't take a "more is better" approach to input tea is very safe.  Consuming up to 20 grams per day of it should be fine.  

You can offset any potential risks by varying types and sources.  You could maximize those risks in the opposite way, buying a kilogram of the most inexpensive, questionable tea you can find from an Indian or Chinese market source, maximizing your contact with those somewhat rare inputs by concentrating the same exposure form.  I don't necessarily trust all the "wild origin" claims I hear, but if half of the tea I consume really is of that form that seems positive, and at this point most of what I drink is represented as such.

One might wonder what all of this is based on, beyond my own personal experience, and where it ends, what aging is likely to be like in one's 70s or 80s, if all goes well.  My parents have observed many of these practices, and are in great health at nearly 80.  Many of my family members lived healthy lives well into their 90s (which of course introduces a potential genetic input).  My Thai mother-in-law is from a family where people tend to not experience much of their 60s and she is holding up well at over 80 now.  Activity seemed to make a difference, and decent diet.  Her sleep regimen is awful, and she never does significant cardio stress exercise; one might get away with letting one of these positive inputs drop.  Her mobility is severely limited now; any gap may come at a price.

I hope that some of this is helpful to others.  There's more I could add about perspective shift that might help, about meditation as an input, for example, but I'll get back to that kind of thing more later.

my wife Eye also holds up pretty well in spite of only experiencing some of these themes

Teaberry and partridgeberry tisanes (natural wintergreen herb tea)

 

teaberry!  aka wintergreen.

partridgeberry; smaller, rounder leaves.

I've long since been intrigued by the possibility of making an herb tea / tisane from teaberry leaves, or at least a plant type I grew up knowing as teaberry.  In reviewing background for this post it turns out that two different local plants--that are common where I'm from, Western Pennsylvania, where I visit now--are both probably referred to as teaberry, when one is a variation of partidgeberry.  Or so a couple of online sources indicate; it's hard to drill down to the absolute fact of the matter in online references.  

Let's start with what I understood, beyond picking and eating what I took to be teaberries.  I've read different accounts about using teaberry as a tisane, including a claim that it oxidizes well, as "real tea" does.  Here is more background, from the book "Secrets of Native American Herbal Remedies:"

Wintergreen (Gaultheria Procumbens) is an aromatic evergreen shrub native to North America.  Also called Canada tea and deerberry, wintergreen is often used to relieve pain and inflammation.  The leaves of wintergreen contain methyl salicylate, which is closely related to aspirin.  Several tribes, including the Delaware and Mohican, have used a tea made from the leaves to treat kidney disorders.  The Great Lakes and Eastern Woodland tribes have used poultices from wintergreen, applying them topically to treat arthritic aches and pains.

That hadn't really the basis for my interest, but it was interesting.  Wikipedia adds this, about teaberries:

The fruits of G. procumbens, considered its actual "teaberries", are edible, with a taste of mildly sweet wintergreen similar to the flavors of the Mentha varieties M. piperita (peppermint) and M. spicata (spearmint) even though G. procumbens is not a true mint. The leaves and branches make a fine herbal tea, through normal drying and infusion process. For the leaves to yield significant amounts of their essential oil, they need to be fermented for at least three days.

teaberry leaves with moderate bruising, not nearly enough to enable oxidation

teaberry leaves bruised and chopped

It was partly this oxidation potential that made it interesting.  This Youtube video clarifies the difference between partridgeberries and teaberries, confirming that both are edible, as fruits (berries) or leaves.  That correct identification helps explain why the partridgeberry fruit is a little bit minty but the leaves aren't overly so.  This Youtube video passes on guidance for finding and identifying "real" teaberry.

This plant source covers more background, about that second plant type:

Mitchella repens, Partridgeberry, Partridge Berry, Native Bare Root Perennial

A trailing, evergreen herb with white, fragrant, tubular flowers in pairs. Partridgeberry is a creeping, perennial herb, no taller than 2 in. high. All parts are dainty, including its pairs of small, rounded, evergreen leaves; tiny, trumpet-shaped, pinkish-white flowers; and scarlet berries.

A most attractive woodland creeper with highly ornamental foliage, it can be used as a groundcover under acid-loving shrubs and in terraria in the winter. The common name implies that the scarlet fruits are relished by partridges, and they are consumed by a variety of birds and mammals. Indian women drank a tea made from the leaves as an aid in childbirth.

No one brews an herb tea / tisane from either of these plants where I'm from, typically; the teaberry name isn't necessarily taken as an indication that drying and brewing the leaves would be a great idea.

I've tracked down both, growing right beside my parents' and brother's homes, and have made a tisane out of both (attempting some rolling of the leaves, then drying them).  At time of writing an early draft I've only brewed the teaberry leaves, but I will write this related to trying the other.

Teaberry tastes minty, as this one passage suggests; the leaf flavor really is "wintergreen."  The teaberries don't taste that much like the leaves, but there is some overlap.  I'll skip adding more on partidgeberry character in this intro section, but related to tasting fresh leaves they just taste a bit vegetal, without much flavor coming through at all.

Preparation and review:

I tried out bruising / rolling the leaves to support oxidation, but it didn't seem to have much effect.  I'm not sure that the compounds in these leaves are right for this transition (either of them, really), or if I just didn't bruise them enough.  I suspect using a mortar and pestle and really grinding the leaves a bit would help, where I just tried rolling the partridgeberry with a rolling pin, and pounding the teaberries with a mallet for tenderizing meat, then slicing those into thin strips, to support more air contact to internal leaf compounds.  Onto review notes then.

teaberry / wintergreen brewed on the lighter side

Teaberry:  it tastes like wintergreen.  For some people that's all I would need to say, if that mint flavor range is familiar.  It's less peppery than peppermint or spearmint, but closer to spearmint for being milder.  It's quite sweet and pleasant.  I didn't use enough to really dial up infusion strength, maybe 3 grams for two rounds of Western style brewing, but it was enough to see how it would work out.

It seems odd breaking that down further.  It was minty, along that particular line for flavor, wintergreen.  There's not much to add.  There was no astringency, or vegetal range character.  I suspect that variation and depth could be had by properly oxidizing the leaves, but I'm out of time to experiment with that here, and I'm not carrying fresh plant leaves back to Thailand.  I could rapidly dry some, skipping an oxidation step, but I've already tried that prepared herb version.

I brewed the leaves twice and mixed the mostly spent leaves with partly brewed out black tea, from breakfast, and the resulting mix tasted strongly of that one mint note, in a pleasant way.  Apparently they had more to give.  Simmering the leaves might be promising, really forcing flavor extraction.  Or there's a masala chai trick of simmering tea and herbs, letting it sit, re-simmering it, and letting it sit again, resulting in brewing at or near boiling point temperature for an extended time.

Partridgeberry:  there is a trace of mint, but not much, and beyond that the vegetal range flavor is a bit subtle.  It doesn't taste like much.  It's nice that it can be used as a tisane, and I suppose it could be helpful if it really does have medicinal qualities, but related to the experience of drinking it there just isn't that much going on.  Teaberry leaves as a tisane are interesting and pleasant, but partridgeberry leaf isn't.

One might wonder why I'm going on and on about plants that produce berries in relation to brewing the leaves, and leaving the berries out of it, not brewing those.  They're not berries in the sense of strawberries or raspberries; they're subtle in character.  Teaberries are pleasant, sweet and minty, but partridgeberries don't taste like much at all.  Teaberries aren't really flavorful enough to be promising as a tisane, brewed alone, although maybe I'm wrong, and that might work.

There's one mystery left in all this, related to ligonberries, which are described as the same thing as partridgeberries in some references.  How is this possible?  Ligonberries are relatively similar to cranberry; they should be quite flavorful and tart, but these are almost entirely flavorless.  Two possibilities come to mind, but there may be others:  these aren't really a variation of ligonberries (or just that, called a different name), or they are related but it's a plant type variation, that isn't identical.  I don't know, really.  Intensity could vary by season, related to time of the year, but surely not as much as this, to cause a strong-flavored berry to be flavorless some of the time.

At any rate the one plant people refer to as teaberries locally really is that, and its berries are sweeter and more flavorful, with the leaves "wintergreen" in flavor.  The other doesn't taste like much, as berries or dried and brewed leaves.

Family visit photos, back to Western Pennsylvania

As I'd mentioned I've been in Western PA, visiting my family.  These notes, and most of the text, is from that visit, and I finish the editing while traveling back to Bangkok again.  I won't add much more about that, but I will share some photos from there.

view from a balcony at my parents' house

the colors change fast; this was two weeks later

a hunting lodge sort of theme

again earlier in the stay, a creek beside their house

not much later, showing more color

my kids and two cousins

meeting those kids was a main highlight (and one other); it was hard leaving them

Are slimming tea products unethical?

 

It seems strange asking and answering this question; all of this was sorted out and overdone years ago, and has went quiet since.  A new producer brings it all up again.

I'll start with the short answer, or at least my take:  yes, slimming tea products are unethical.  

At least in the most common form they occur in.  Exceptions are possible; that's a lot of what I'm discussing here.

The main theme is using "real tea," or just other herbal ingredients, to serve as a laxative and diuretic, to cause people to lose water weight and speed up bowel movement processing.  Both will cause a temporary weight loss effect, but neither is "slimming" in the sense of helping someone lose body fat, the main intended meaning.  Both are relatively unhealthy, since maintaining normal digestion and appropriate hydration level is more optimum, and adjusting and disrupting these is less healthy.

What about a stimulant effect; couldn't that help with weight loss?  Yes, to a limited extent.  Caffeine already is a stimulant, present in every kind of "real tea," camellia sinensis based versions, and adding more of that, or that plus some other stimulant, is probably not a good idea.  It doesn't really work to speed up metabolism to lose weight anyway; it's far superior to adjust diet inputs, to ingest less calories.

I can easily enough explain why that is.  I run a good bit, 10 km / 6.4 miles per outing, three times a week (typically), for a total of 20 miles or 30 km per week.  According to a tracking app that burns about 600 calories per outing, towards 2000 per week; that's a good start.  But it's not hard at all to eat an extra 600 calories per day, and certainly not 300, working back to a weekly average.  Revving up metabolism an equivalent amount through stimulants lands on the same result, that it's not helpful unless daily dietary intake and expenditure balance.  

If medium-high exercise for three hours a week "only" burns up an additional 2000 calories, or about that, stacking an extra stimulant on top of ingesting caffeine would need to make a significant difference--and have potentially significant negative side effects--to achieve the same outcome.  Then eating or otherwise consuming an extra 300 calories per day would be easy; it's not that much.  Two cans of Coke is close to that (278); you could just drink that input daily.

So as I see it people creating, marketing, and selling "slimming tea" versions are more or less selling snake oil.  At best the products wouldn't do much, and at worst laxative and diuretic effect or stimulant input would be quite negative.  

Caffeine is already a diuretic too, beyond being a stimulant, so ordinary tea already covers that.  People's experience of side effects vary, so not everyone would agree with that, and it requires a significant daily dose to cause that effect (water loss), but a daily recommended limit of 400 mg of caffeine will cause water loss for most people.  Taking even more diuretic is not a good idea; temporarily losing water weight isn't helpful.

Some people might feel that they retain too much water, and feel bloated, so it would be good for them.  An easy way to offset this is to limit intake of compounds that cause increased water retention, particularly salt (sodium).  Or drinking more tea could help, and adding a bit more caffeine, which is a bit counter-intuitive, since that's ingesting more water as well.  Tea is said to contain between 25 and 40 mg of caffeine per a standard 8 ounce cup (250 ml, more or less), so brewed a bit strong it might take 10 cups to ingest that standard daily limit of 400 mg, the same as in four cups of coffee (on average).  80 ounces of tea is well over 2 quarts / liters; depending on the diuretic effect experienced someone might not need to add more water to compensate, but given how it can speed up water loss some people would.

I'm not claiming that maxing out caffeine intake is definitely a good idea, to speed up metabolism and get diuretic effect to really kick in.  I typically drink about 8 grams worth of tea a day, intentionally keeping that moderate, which I expect might amount to around 240 mg total (maybe less), down to 220 or less since extraction rate isn't 100%.  Long term effects are impossible to predict, so to me practicing moderation makes sense, related to essentially everything we consume.

Back to the specific starting point, the ethics issue.

A new slimming tea product

It's this product, last discussed by the developers in this tea group post:

Oddly that post is about discussing potential product names, and they've already set up the vending page with the product name and some marketing content, so that seems odd, and perhaps not completely genuine.

What is it they're discussing, or selling?  That's not clear yet.  They've implied it's based on pu'er tea, but there are no product details out yet.  Maybe that plus a diuretic and laxative, the most conventional earlier form.  Maybe something else.  It seems unlikely that they might incorporate a formerly unknown herbal input that really helps with weight loss, but I suppose it's not inconceivable.

  

About that, I wrote not so long ago about how brewing ground up papaya seeds extracts a compound that suppresses fat digestion.  That's not so far off the theme of an earlier supplement that did the same, which was embraced and then universally rejected for changing the consistency of the subject's stool in a negative way, making it loose and oily.  That's covered in the Mayo Clinic's summary of Orlistat functions, benefits, and side effects.  This problem stands out:

These side effects include:

Stomach pain or upset stomach

Oily discharge from the anus...

Yeah, no.  

For sure other compounds and herbs out there support weight loss, but there is no magic fix, or it would already be on the market.  Interfering with digestion is an interesting twist, seemingly more promising than stimulant effect, if an input version didn't have such problematic side effects.  Hunger suppression, the effect underpinning the latest Ozempic / Semaglutide craze, is also promising.

Since we can't evaluate or critique the weight loss effect or mechanism of their product, which may or may not exist in a final form yet, let's at least consider something seemingly similar, a pu'er based weight loss support product that adds herbs to support that function, Purasana Pu'er Tea Fat Burner.

Ingredients:  Pu-erh tea (Camellia sinensis), peppermint (Mentha piperata), hibiscus flower (Hibiscus sabdariffa), goldenrod (Solidago virgaurea), rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis)

They claim that goldenrod and rosemary are the "effective ingredients," in that sales page content, or sort of just imply that.  If rosemary made a lot of difference for weight loss people would already be making tea from that.  I have before, many times; it's pleasant.  I didn't lose weight drinking it.

According to this reference goldenrod, which can refer to differing plant types, is a set of flowering plants used as an herb tea / tisane in early US colonial times.  Wikipedia mentions this background and these uses:

Traditional medicine

Solidago virgaurea is used in a traditional kidney tonic by practitioners of herbal medicine to counter inflammation and irritation caused by bacterial infections or kidney stones.[43][44] Goldenrod is also used in some formulas for cleansing of the kidney or bladder during a healing fast, in conjunction with potassium broth and specific juices.[44] Some Native American cultures traditionally chew the leaves to relieve sore throats, and the roots to relieve toothaches.[28]

Medicinal exploration

In various assessments by the European Medicines Agency with respect to Solidago virgaurea, non-clinical data shows diuretic, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, analgesic and spasmolytic, antibacterial, antifungal, anticancer and immunomodulatory activity...

So it could be quite helpful in different uses, but is probably being utilized here as a diuretic.  Note that weight loss is not included in this substantial list of potential benefits.  Maybe another reference can add to that, like this Mount Sinai hospital database record:

Medicinal Uses and Indications

Goldenrod may act as a diuretic, meaning it flushes water from the body by increasing urine output. It may also reduce inflammation. However, it has not really been studied in humans.

Goldenrod is sometimes suggested for the following conditions:

Arthritis and gout

Allergies

Colds and flu

Inflammation of the bladder or urinary tract

Kidney stones

Eczema (applied to the skin)

Minor wounds (applied to the skin)

In that first Wikipedia citation they stated that "non-clinical data shows diuretic, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant..." (properties / benefits), aligning these two inputs.  It's probably good for you, but that second source warns against taking it with any other compounds that have a diuretic effect, since it has such a strong related effect itself.

Diuretics (water pills): Goldenrod may make diuretics stronger, raising the risk of dehydration.

...Other drugs: Due to its diuretic action, goldenrod may interact with any medication that is processed through the kidneys and urine.

So Purasana Puerh Tea Fat Burner seems unlikely to actually help with burning fat, since pu'er and those other common herbs don't support that (most likely, to a significant degree), but it will cause water weight loss.

But first let's back up a bit; maybe rosemary really can support weight loss, and I'm just unaware of that.  I had just set that aside as clearly absurd, but let's check, here:  Therapeutic effects of rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis L.) and its active constituents on nervous system disorders

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis L.) is an evergreen bushy shrub which grows along the Mediterranean Sea, and sub-Himalayan areas. In folk medicine, it has been used as an antispasmodic, mild analgesic, to cure intercostal neuralgia, headaches, migraine, insomnia emotional upset, and depression. Different investigations have highlighted rosemary neuropharmacological properties as their main topics. 

Rosemary has significant antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, anti-apoptotic, anti-tumorigenic, antinociceptive, and neuroprotective properties. Furthermore, it shows important clinical effects on mood, learning, memory, pain, anxiety, and sleep. The aim of the current work is to review the potential neuropharmacological effects of different rosemary extracts and its active constituents on nervous system disorders, their relevant mechanisms and its preclinical application to recall the therapeutic potential of this herb and more directions of future research projects...

The focus of the following research review isn't on all potential health benefits, but this summary and the following outline of context doesn't list weight loss as any traditionally observed potential benefit:

Rosemary, Rosmarinus officinalis L. (Labiatae) has been used in folk medicine to alleviate several diseases including headache, dysmenorrhea, stomachache, epilepsy, rheumatic pain, spasms, nervous agitation, improvement of memory, hysteria, depression, as well as physical and mental fatigue (5, 6)... . 

Recently, noticeable scientific interest is focused on the beneficial therapeutic properties of different kinds of rosemary extracts and its main constituents, such as carnosic acid, carnosol, rosmarinic acid, etc. A large number of studies either on animal models or cultured cells indicate the wide range medicinal properties of rosemary and its compounds such as anti-inflammatory (8, 9), anti-oxidant (10), antinociceptive (11), neuroprotective (12), antidepressant, anti-hysteric, ameliorative of memory and mental fatigue (13-15) (Figure 1)...

Why was it added to a weight loss support product then?  Who knows, but it sounds positive enough, related to so many other effects.  Maybe it helps prevent the pu'er from wrecking your stomach.  That only makes sense if it's sheng pu'er, since shou is the least impactful type of tea, and one other point that comes up in a later source indicates shou might be a better match for this kind of product.

That's a dozen or so very positive effects, from these two herbs.  Would you really recognize all these benefits?  Probably not, based on minute dosage inputs of these and pu'er along with two other herbs.  If the diuretic effect of goldenrod is strong enough that plus caffeine may have an impact.

Back to ethics

Is it really unethical to sell these products based on health claims that seem dubious at best?  I think so, but it's a judgement call.

Drinking only pu'er, without any herbs, could support weight loss, if someone was replacing drinking soda, but that's not part of any "slimming tea" product claims.  Water works for that.

What if there was more to it?  What if they, the two younger American-Chinese business founders, were in on some sort of specialized knowledge?  That is part of the claim, outlined in this earlier link:

Hey Pu'er Tea Club members,

I’m Erik, and together with my sister Angela, we’re embarking on a fascinating journey inspired by our family's deep-rooted connection to tea.

Growing up, our family's move from China to the U.S. greatly influenced our perspective on tea. It became more than a beverage; it was a bridge between cultures and eras. Our dad has spent years researching the health aspects of tea, particularly focusing on a compound in Pu'er tea known as theabrownin. His findings even made their way into the Nature Journal, an awesome achievement!

This sparked in us a desire to explore how we could blend our love for traditional Pu'er tea with modern health concepts. While we're in the early stages of conceptualizing a venture around this idea, our primary goal is to learn and grow within this space...

So could they be identifying a health benefit from a known compound, theabrownin, present in high levels in some pu'er (mostly shou, it seems), and then creating a product around that?  Maybe, but probably not, since if that's all that is happening someone could just drink the pu'er, any similar range version.  

As a related aside, it's not uncommon for research in some countries to be sponsored by commercial interests, for paid support to lead directly to health claims findings that can be used for marketing.  Even if that hadn't been the starting point context anyone can drink pu'er, and for sure this will end up being another tea and herbs blend, with either laxative or diuretic properties, or both.  Or it would be nice if that's not the case.

Let's consider what theabrownin is all about anyway.  Google search brings up this study as the first result:   Theabrownin modulates the gut microbiome and serum metabolome in aging mice induced by D-galactose

Theabrownin (TB) is a complex oxidized polyphenol formed during the microbial fermentation of Pu-erh tea. It offers some health benefits such as weight loss, blood glucose reduction, and oxidation resistance; however, the anti-aging effect and the related mechanism have not yet been explored. In this study, symptoms of aging were induced in mice using D-galactose. Morris water maze test, hematoxylin-eosin staining, 16S rDNA high-throughput sequencing, and UHPLC-QE-MS metabolomics were used to reveal the anti-aging effects and potential mechanism of TB...

So they just throw it out there that of course it supports weight loss, but they're on to reviewing anti-aging potential in that work.  Maybe that's why I look so young (but I drink young sheng the most?).  The background is clear on what they're looking into, but the part about it relating to ripe or shou pu'er isn't promising to me though, as a sheng drinker:

Pu-erh tea is a traditional, historically famous tea from Yunnan, China, made from sun-dried green tea of large-leaf tea trees (Camellia sinensis var. assamica) by microbial solid-state fermentation (Liang et al., 2005, Zhao et al., 2010). It has a unique flavor, full-bodied aroma, outstanding aging aroma, and is a bright red soup with a mellow taste. TB is one of the essential active ingredients of Pu-erh tea. The content of TB in Pu-erh ripe tea can reach 16.86%, which is the primary color substance of Pu-erh ripe tea and plays a decisive role in its quality and function (Qin et al., 2009)...

[in later conclusions]...Drinking Pu-erh ripe tea can produce a variety of metabolic changes in the human body that are linked to the intestinal flora. Therefore, it is suggested that drinking pu-erh tea may change and adjust the structure of intestinal flora (Qasim, Aziz, Rasheed, Gul, & Khan, 2016)...

The linked claims here seem clear enough:  shou pu'er supports healthy digestion function, which carries over to a range of benefits, all the way to supporting longevity and mental health in later life.  How this ties to weight loss isn't clear in this paper; maybe that's a completely unrelated additional positive effect.  Maybe well-aged sheng could mirror this compound inclusion and final effect; that would all be the subject of another study.  

One more aside, they were using Dayi shou for the tests; nice.  Some aged CNNP / Zhong Cha would also be pleasant, but it's good that it worked using a newer version "(label No.7262, batch No.1801, produced on July 5, 2018)."  With that published in February 2022 it had probably had a few years to lose that early funky character, which I can't imagine changes the weight loss or anti-aging effects.

It's not inconceivable that some mix of shou pu'er and herbs could provide some new set of inputs and effects, even though I've been skeptical of that being remotely possible in this discussion.  It would really only be possible to question or dismiss any specific set of claims based on product information and review of related effects from ingredient inputs.

If those entrepreneurs turned up some supposedly traditional Chinese tea and herb blend recipe said to cause weight loss I would still be skeptical, but that couldn't be automatically dismissed.  The Indian Ayurvedic tradition seems to draw on those themes in a parallel way, on a mix of herb inputs or foods accomplishing what any one alone does not cause.  That does seem to be what Traditional Chinese Medicine was always about, combining a range of supporting inputs, not this one-to-one cause and effect sort of sequence that we focus on more in "the West," in terms of supplements, medicine, and other health inputs.

The only claim and background communicated so far relates to modern, relatively Western-style research study, and from the little I've reviewed, or that they have mentioned.  It only relates to drinking fermented / shou pu'er, somewhat explicitly, but even that is indirect.  Even if shou does happen to cause weight loss drinking Dayi already covers that, or any standard source brand.  If this new product is just shou pu'er with extra herbs to function as a diuretic and laxative it will follow the prior pattern, and won't be worth much consideration.

I hope that it's not that, that they create something novel, interesting, and useful.

Roasted papaya seeds as a coffee substitute, with monk fruit seeds

Oddly I wasn't trying to see if roasted papaya seeds might work as a coffee substitute, and I certainly wasn't focusing on any specific health claim benefits.  It came up that the seeds might be healthy, so I prepared them in an arbitrary way, and it was amazing how similar they are to coffee.  You can skip ahead to that part in a "review" section, or hear about the background, and another tisane I prepaired them with, monk-fruit seeds.  It's more or less some sort of super-food input too, it turns out; strange.

 

This all started with seeing a gag video of a woman eating a papaya, consuming the seeds instead of the fruit.  Several comments said that you really should eat them, that they're healthy, especially related to clearing out internal parasites.  So I dried them the next time I bought a papaya, a couple days later.  That cost me less than $2 for a huge, almost ripe one; Thailand is an absolute paradise for tropical fruit.

I warmed them in a toaster oven for 20 minutes and they didn't fully dry, so I gave them another 20 minutes at 160 C.  That seemed to roast them a little, going beyond drying them, which didn't seem like a concern, or maybe even a positive input.  

I then crushed them in a mortar and pestle device and brewed them along with a sweet Chinese herb my favorite shop owners gave me last week (seeds of a monk fruit, it turns out).  It's a little too sweet and a bit one-dimensional on its own, so it seemed perfect for combining with this, since surely dried papaya seeds aren't very sweet (probably; I guess I still don't know that for sure).

Let's check on monk fruit background and health benefits and then set that aside:

Monk fruit is known for its delicious, sweet taste that comes from natural antioxidants such as flavonoids and mogrosides. It is currently gaining popularity as a natural, low-calorie sweetener.

Monk fruit extract has been used in traditional medicine for centuries due to the following potential health benefits:

Prevents oxidative damage

Studies in rats and mice have shown that monk fruit antioxidants have protective effects...

Research suggests that flavonoids and mogrosides in monk fruit can reduce blood sugar levels. According to a study, monk fruit extract can reduce inflammation, repair damaged cells in the pancreas, and relieve symptoms in mice with diabetes...

Research shows that eating mogrosides helps suppress fat and cholesterol levels and reduce body weight in mice with obesity...

Monk fruit polysaccharides can increase the activity and function of immune system organs like the thymus and spleen in mice... 

Monk fruit can protect the liver and even repair liver damage....

That shop owner (Kittichai of Jip Eu) said that it helps with a fever, that you can take it to help your immune system when you are sick.  I got the impression that he also meant that it reduces internal heat in the Traditional Chinese Medicine sense, the heat / cold / wind / qi kind of theme, which I know nothing about.  

It's definitely really sweet, and it has a more pleasant flavor than stevia, which has more of an aftertaste.

Review:

it's oily

This is really good.  I really didn't expect this to be good; that wasn't in the range of what I expected as a possible outcome.  It tastes like coffee; this could be coffee.  Then there's an herbal edge to it's that's not coffee, so I suppose it could be coffee flavored in some way, like with one of those flavored creamers.  Of course I can't separate the input of the monk fruit, but from having that alone earlier it adds a relatively neutral and intense sweetness. 

The flavor list:  coffee, mild bitterness, oily / creamy feel (ok, that's not a flavor), sweetness (a little like stevia, but not as aggressive, but with a similar but lighter aftertaste).  There's also an odd flavor resembling root spice, like root beer, so sassafras root.  A rich, warm dried fruit tone resembles tamarind; that might be partly from the monk fruit, and I just don't remember it tasting like that, since maybe the sweetness overpowered the flavor trying it alone.

The oily feel is odd; that's pleasant, in this context, but paired with other flavors it could be really off-putting.  It's just like how gas station coffee feels when you add artificial creamer to it; it's thicker and creamier than cream causes.  There is literally an oil coating on the top of this so that's no wonder.  They're seeds; they can contain as much oil as they happen to.

for once I Western-style brewed something, and used a strainer

Second infusion:  like the first round, but much thinner.  The sweetness of that herb is even more pronounced, because those just keep brewing, but the papaya seed is surely done now.  It's even closer to gas station coffee now.

I don't mean that as a criticism.  For older people who were there in the 20th century gas station coffee was a respectable thing.  I would add for younger people that it's like grocery store tin coffee but I bet that's not going to help.  Like McDonald's coffee, or Tim Horton's?  Just kidding; I only eat the doughnuts there, and I don't know what it's like.  Their maple cream-filled doughnuts are so good though.

I bet if you bumped this roast level just a little it could seem like French roast.  This is still medium roast level, and since there is no "light" that means light (outside the coffee world; they probably have it).  Then with actual cream and sugar it might seem even more like coffee, almost exactly like it.

Background on papaya seeds as coffee replacement, health benefits

I Google searched use of papaya seeds as a coffee replacement, and it doesn't seem like a common theme, but it did turn up.  This wasn't what I expected:  The Potency of Carica papaya L. Seeds Powderas Anti- Obesity ‘Coffee’ Drinks

Other formal and informal sources aren't making and reviewing this health claim, or even mentioning this subject.  Here is their conclusion:

Based on the above explanation, it can be concluded that 25.1 grams of papaya seed powder can be obtained from 250.0 grams of wet papaya seeds. Most respondents like the texture, color, aroma, and taste of papaya seeds ‘coffee’. The pancreatic lipase inhibition power of 1.42 gram of papaya seed powder is equivalent to 1 tablet (120.0 mg) of Orlistat. Therefore, using papaya seed powder as antiobesity ‘coffee’ drink is reasonable.

Reasonable?  The obvious question is "what is a lipase inhibitor?"  Then next one might wonder if these results are reliable, and if these papaya seeds really function as that as claimed (supported by their actual research study, so maybe).  But let's start with what they are claiming.

Wikipedia article on Orlistat:

Orlistat, sold under the brand name Xenical among others, is a medication used to treat obesity. Its primary function is preventing the absorption of fats from the human diet by acting as a lipase inhibitor, thereby reducing caloric intake. It is intended for use in conjunction with a healthcare provider-supervised reduced-calorie diet.[4]...

Sure, but again what even is a lipase inhibitor?

Human pancreatic lipase

Pancreatic lipase, also known as pancreatic triacylglycerol lipase or steapsin, is an enzyme secreted from the pancreas. As the primary lipase enzyme that hydrolyzes (breaks down) dietary fat molecules in the human digestive system, it is one of the main digestive enzymes, converting triglyceride substrates like 1 found in ingested oils to monoglycerides 3 and free fatty acids 2a and 2b.[5]

So it stops you from digesting some of the fat that you eat.  And this is why the Wikipedia article on Orlistat mentions that a lipase inhibitor can cause your stool (your poop) to seem oily and have a loose texture.  A little of that would go a long way.

It's impossible to estimate my dosage from that.  This might've been about 5 grams (could be 7), and they said that 10 grams makes 1 gram of powder, and you should take 1.4.  So I'm at one third to half of a normal dose, from the seeds from one large papaya?  I'll add how that went in terms of digestion impact tomorrow.  [later edit:  noticeable, and like Wikipedia described, but not problematic].

Reading around these sources they say that it works (lipase inhibitors, not papaya seeds).  I don't want anything adjusting my digestive system, even though I did gain one kg the last time I was weighed (up to 75; I might fast for a week instead of 5 days next time, to get that kg back off).

The standard health-page input is that it's good for supplementation and treating all sorts of things, including bacterial infections, fungal infections, and parasites.  Who knows; maybe.

It's good though, pleasant to drink.  I'll make this again the next time I buy a papaya, since the trees in our yard don't seem to be on that page of offering one just now.  

that's 4 of them, but the middle one has died since

Thinking back this may be the closest I've come to drinking coffee this year.  That's crazy!  In the past I would sometimes drink it at work, but I barely go to work in the office now, one day a week, unless I'm out of the country working remotely.  I'm in the habit of drinking tea-bag tea there now, since I never took tea and an infuser to that new office site.  Then I would drink coffee at hotel breakfasts when we travel in Thailand, but we last traveled in Thailand in Dec-Jan, the holiday break.  

I guess I'm not much of a conventional American now.  At least I've been in a cycle of eating hamburgers recently, but still made out of ground pork, still following the norm that Thais don't eat beef, even though I'm living alone.  At least I grill sometimes?

I'm shocked that this tisane was this good, that it's far and away the best "herb tea" replacement for coffee that I've ever tried, so close to the flavor and feel of coffee.  Who knows about the health claims; those don't seem to matter, unless you could arrange to drink it regularly.

It's a little odd that I experimented with using papaya leaf as a tisane almost 8 years ago and this theme never came up.

Anyone who eats papaya once in awhile should give this a try.  Not even for the health claims, or to replace coffee, just because it's actually good.

Kaley Tea's Ceylon based Christmas blend

 

A vendor who had sent me Ceylon tea to try in the past, Kaley Tea, recently sent a Christmas tea blend version to try.  So nice!  Earlier in this blog history I would experiment with making Christmas blends every year; it seemed a good time to make an exception from only drinking plain teas, and to experiment.  

This says that it contains tea, cardamom, and cloves, so it's a simplified variation of masala chai.  Masala chai is a good start for a Christmas blend; from there people could add fruit, like orange peel, or cacao, or pine needles, but keeping it quite limited could work well too.  It might allow the tea to play more of a role, where if you mix enough things in it wouldn't matter what the tea is.

drying fruit and peels for use in a Christmas blend (covered here)

It's nice to feel like I'm observing Christmas too.  It's a little early for that, since it's around Halloween time, but holiday experiences never match up here anyway.  It might not be so hot in another two months but otherwise the weather in Bangkok is generally consistent year-round, beyond when it rains more.

I'm brewing this using their recommendations, sort of.  They suggest using a teaspoon to make a cup, brewing that for 3 minutes, with an option to brew it a second time.  I brewed more than that, I think, and for longer, so maybe this will be a little strong.  Ordinarily I'm opposed to diluting tea, adding water, no matter what happens, but I could always make an exception if I've screwed this up.

it's definitely less monochromatic in person; I think shading inside the infuser caused that

Review:

Infusion strength isn't bad, maybe just a touch strong.  It wouldn't be unusual for people to add milk and sugar to this, not to cut overwhelming astringency, since this is mild enough, but just to play up the dessert experience feel, or how masala chai is usually made and enjoyed.  I could drink some and then adjust it, to review it both ways.

The spice balance is good.  Cardamom and clove alone really work, and it seems like this is pretty good tea matching with those.  The flavor input of all three is reasonably balanced; it would be easy for spices to overtake the tea range, but they all show through.  It's pleasant like this, but the extra infusion strength pushes it a little far, off of being sweet, light, complex, and approachable, as the softest and sweetest black teas are.  The tea input seems pretty good but I'll stop short of adding a flavor list here.  Malt doesn't show through, so it's not like an Assam, and maybe some of the mineral base that is distinctive in Ceylon is giving this good balance.

The general effect is very clean; there is no negative contribution of any aspect.  Not very poetic a description, right, compared to bringing up some childhood image of people around a fireplace, drinking tea and eating gingerbread Christmas cookies, or whatever else?  This would go really well with cookies; that's what is missing in the overall balance, a reason for drinking a clean and positive black tea with spice inputs.  

I like the tea but it's not what I'm accustomed to, and this really would make a lot more sense in some sort of late fall or winter context.  It probably would make a nice iced tea, but it's odd mentally switching channels like that, considering a radically different context.  For drinking it plain maybe it would be better with food or those cookies.  I'll try it with a little milk and honey and see how that works.

It's good with those added, probably better.  I used skim milk, what I'm drinking right now; surely that's not optimum, but it's still nice.  As with plain black tea all the flavors fall into a completely different balance when you add milk and sugar (or honey, also what I had most handy).  Going even heavier on infusion strength and using more full cream milk than I added would probably be more optimum, to get the full effect of both inputs.  I tried a second infusion brewed for longer (with the same leaves), this time using whole milk (my wife couldn't sleep at night knowing there are two cartons open at once), but of course the effect is better from the first round, the intensity.

One nice part about drinking it this way--adjusted--could be that people who don't drink tea might be more likely to like it.  These particular spice flavors might appeal most to people with more developed food flavor background (in Thailand or in the West), but to me it's quite approachable and pleasant.  For people familiar with this spicing range there would be no need to mess around with this recipe form, and aspects balance, but for others continuing on to add cacao and a fruit input might be good.  Using an apple peeler to remove some outer rind off an orange might be a nice addition too, giving a touch of extra fruit edge.  I don't see this as working well for coupling with some sort of alcohol input (which can come up as another Christmas theme), but people on that page may take that differently.  A little cognac or brandy would definitely completely change this.

It works for evoking a Christmas feel, I think.  It needs those cookies though, not just any one kind, whatever theme people tend to connect with their own expectations.  My Mom would make a lot of kinds; we had large trays of many types around in the holiday season.  This would be perfect with a kind we didn't make then, which we called whoopie pies, two soft chocolate cookies sandwiching a cream filling center.  Maybe even better with gingerbread men; that would round out the typical set expectation of ginger being the other main input in a traditional masala chai (as I see it; for others black pepper or other things could be added).

This might be a good year for messing around with your own Christmas blend experience; either go out and buy one, or keep an eye out for spice inputs, like spearmint, cacao, or whatever else.  There's still time to work out how adding pine needles to tea works for people in the US, which tree type needle inputs definitely won't poison you, and how drying or chopping the material changes infusion results.  Making adjusted masala chai versions takes practice; you might need a couple of trial rounds to prepare something you can serve to others (all of which I've covered in this blog).

Many thanks to Kaley for sharing this, and an early happy holidays for all readers!  

Brewing tea for plants (tisane, really)

I've been tending my mother-in-law's gardens for the last 7 weeks, and have experimented with brewing a tisane version from fallen leaves to nourish them. The idea came from throwing rinses out into the yard, about considering how the plants would probably prefer the main infusions, what I drink instead.  Then she also keeps very large jars around to catch rainwater to use, and leaves falling in those brews a light infusion that might essentially feed them. 

Connecting the ideas I tried out putting a large amount of leaves into two large empty pots, then filling them with water, pouring that on the plants, and repeating the process.

 

It sounds like an impractical amount of work, doesn't it? I've spent hours on the experiment. I remove the water using a couple of small buckets, straining most leaves by drawing it from one side. It takes many such buckets to empty a pot, maybe 40, drawing out 3 liters / quarts at a time, emptying maybe around 30 gallons a round (130 or so liters).

Does it work though?  How could I know if it's helpful for the plants, or if there is some form of risk (eg. mold contamination)? I asked that in a gardening group, drawing no response. I could tell by the plants' health, I guess. Some that had been growing very pale, yellowish new leaves have gone mostly green in just a few days, with green coverage spreading from the inner veins. Who knows though, really.

Mentioning this here relates to it being interesting, and vaguely related to tea. And to potentially drawing feedback, which isn't really how blogging goes.

Conventional composting would probably be easier and more efficient, piling these leaves mixed with some soil, and keeping that damp. That brings up another comparison that would only ring a bell or be interesting to tea drinkers, about shu pu'er.

One pot I filled with drier, fresher leaves, from the top of a pile swept together, and the bottom layer had been there for a couple of weeks, regularly wetted by rain in that time.   The bottom of that pile had already been decomposing, seeming a bit like dirt, or I guess also like shu pu'er.  It "brewed" a lot faster, producing rich, brown liquid right away, while the other leaves produced a paler liquid the first day. It has evened out some since, but the one pot is still breaking down faster.

It sounds like I'm going somewhere with all this, doesn't it?  Not so much.  If anyone has feedback about the pros or cons of this sort of practice it would be interesting to hear that.  I'll close this with more photos of the garden.

birds of paradise

many of the plants are in pots, some with minimal soil, making watering them more demanding

some recent additions from a farm in Chayapum; one will become a jackfruit tree

these are blue pea / butterfly flowers, a tisane, but I don't care for that

papaya!  there are a dozen or so growing now; the race is on with the squirrel

higher growing flowering vines have a sweet scent, only in the evening

Myra Kidney

cat in natural environment

Mama Nid with the kids and that one cat