Teas with special aims!

[Badi]

Hi!

I wish to explore about teas from east part of the world (China, India…) with special aim!
I want to know which tea is the best for appeasement on the nerves!
Which tea is the best for people whose have problem with sleeping?
I want to know which tea is the best for urinary track?!

Thanks

[bintuborg]

Science doesnt support the theory that tea can be used for medicinal purposes.

[chaiguy]

UTI is cranberry juice

[jayinhk]

https://cse.google.com.hk/cse?cx=partne ... gsc.page=1

For me, good, young raw pu erh is best for calming me down and putting me to sleep.

[Midwinter_Sun]

UTI is cranberry juice

Cranberry is excellent! Also, cranberry extract ( even powdered extract worked for me).
Also, garlic
with cranberry, make sure to get the pure version, no need for added sugar or sweeteners.

For sleep, I would suggest valerian ( scientific studies are inconclusive, but it works wonders, from personal experience at least ).

As far as tea - current scientific studies on tea health benefits are "inconclusive"
https://nccih.nih.gov/health/greentea

[john.b]

This is a subject I've been considering lately, really more related to tisanes than teas. One does see marketing claims that separate different health benefits for different categories of teas (green, oolong, etc.) but the support for that is usually quite thin. Some are based on traditional knowledge (something someone else said, maybe in the past), or maybe on studies, but these usually don't seem at all rigorous, and often can be traced back to an interested source. Just because there isn't good evidence doesn't mean the claims aren't accurate, of course.

The same isn't so different for tisanes, oddly enough. There is a long history of claims being regarded as true, lots of claims for lots of herbs and such, and some limited nutritional information, or narrow-scope studies, but again not much turns up easily that seems reputable. And again, just because the evidence is thin doesn't mean the benefits aren't real, it just makes it hard to evaluate if they really are or aren't.

The closest one gets to advice on how to find good references is to consult a specialist, a medical herbalist, which just transfers the problem to an authority, which may or may not help based on leading back to relatively grounded information. It all seems like a lot of gap, given this subject isn't that far from conventional nutrition.

Then again modern nutrition is sort of grasping at straws too, jumping on the last study to declare any number of foods as "superfoods" because a lot of foods really are good for you in specific ways, it's just hard to pin down which for what, or define the scope, effectiveness, limitations, and balance. Based on following this "research" one might base a diet on kale, blueberries, goji berries, wheatgrass, avacodo, etc., with the problem that as different studies come out foods are great then not so great, so one might switch on and off some (eg. soy). It's just where we are now; nutrition has the basics down but the rest is a bit primitive.

I've researched some tisanes a little just to see what turns up, how good or limited the content is: mulberry leaf, sage, and papaya leaf. What turns up on a Google search and current US government health agency references aren't really a good summary of current best knowledge but there isn't a lot out there.

[Midwinter_Sun]

john.b

Studying the subtle effects of tea on human diet is impossible today, methinks, because today is changing at such a drastic pace.

We know that the staples of the western diet such as processed sugar and white flour are detrimental to health.

But if we are to study the effects of tea today, tea that does not decay teeth like sugar nor lead to obesity, where would we find that perfect human that is not going to be living in dramatically changed conditions over the span of 10 years? Would a proper study have to factor in millions of factors?


Until a proper lab study with lab raised humans in an uncontaminated environment is done, it is all anecdote

[john.b]

There has to be some middle ground, a way to use empirical evidence to evaluate traditional understanding based claims. I see this in the case of tea and tisanes as not completely separate from concerns about nutrition. We have to keep making choices about diet but the scientific evidence for which foods or which combinations of foods do exactly what isn't going to be clear anytime soon.

In that case there is no alternative to continuing to eat, except maybe soylent, which seems a bit sketchy, and of course someone could choose not to drink tea or tisanes. But just because we can't clearly determine and quantify which benefits or positive attributes are real and which aren't doesnt mean that some aren't, related to both foods and tisanes, and to some extent perhaps also to tea. It is possible to identify which vitamins found in a Centrum multivitamin tablet are found in which tisanes, and in which quantities, but of course nutrition isn't limited to that.

The irony here is that the average modern diet, to whatever extent there could be such a thing, may be inferior in some regards to what people were eating 100 years ago. In the case of fast foods that's almost certainly true but it's hard to say which other factors relate that aren't clearly spelled out yet, like the effects of different storage or preservation methods on secondary trace nutrients, or limits in foods diversity, etc. People can go too far with liking the idea that primitive cultures might have been better in lots of different ways but there are lots of herbs and other food sources people could be consuming that they aren't now, and it's not all sorted out.

[Midwinter_Sun]

Some excellent points.

I myself however do not see any middle ground today. We can do limited lab controlled experiments well.
Or if the patient is terminal
If more in the placebo group died, we have a cure!

There is ample proof that there is less nutrition in food today. Less elements. less "good " calories.

But if I start giving puerh tea to a group of EU residents that is right now consuming sugar produced from beet and cane, yet in five years the nice little expansion of high fructose corn syrup thanks to US corporate interests takes over, do I now have to factor in a major new obesity causing element into the study?

Just in the last 2 years all the generic brands in the stores have been slowly switching over to corn fructose, from muesli to ketchup... Rats get fat on it, that is apparently a fact

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3522469/

There are literally millions of factors, I do not see any practical way of studying preventative health benefits of tea on a wild human population.

[entropyembrace]

From my anecdotal personal experience I find that Rooibos is very effective for relaxation and sleep

[john.b]

The problem already described seems the main difficulty in evaluating health claims, that these can't be verified. I've recently ran across an additional input, which doesn't solve it, but it's interesting to consider.

I talked with the owner of a new tea shop that had owned a Chinese herbal medicine store here (in Bangkok), and he explained how it works. He didn't seem to be trained as the equivalent of a doctor (herbal medical specialist, or something such), but he did work in that family business prior and owned his own branch of one.

This won't be satisfying as either evidence or complete description, but we talked a little about the process for people to determine which herbs to take. it's not so different than with Western medical care, just based on less hard science, which isn't to say it doesn't work, just that it seems more likely it may or may not. He said those specialists use techniques like taking your pulse, or checking qualities of your pulse, or looking at your tongue (which he claimed can indicate a lot about different conditions), and asking questions about symptoms or issues, and that these provide evidence of conditions that relate to internal organ function. That was starting to sound a little hazy but at least he didn't say anything about heat or wind or phlegm. Then they prescribe some combination of herbs.

According to him it can often work, but in lots of cases people are seeking such help because Western medicine has already failed them, so they're often not easy cases. He said that type of approach works better in a preventative fashion, or when symptoms are minor, not for curing advanced and serious medical conditions. As he owns a tea shop he also tried to incorporate some of that approach in herbal blends he sold, functionally designed blends that were also supposed to taste ok.

I don't have much opinion about all that one way or the other, mostly just passing it on. I tend to believe some degree of it probably is effective because it's drawn from a long tradition of noticing correlations, but it seems as likely some of it doesn't work at all. It's interesting to consider that the current cure for malaria was originally from a Chinese herbal treatment. Researchers investigated a lot of supposed cures and most did nothing but one actually worked a lot better than the current medical cure, which was failing due to evolution in the disease at that time.

[Midwinter_Sun]

John, I got the pleasure of experiencing the benefits of traditional Chinese medicine as a teenager.
I had trouble sleeping and body pain, my parents took me to a Chinese doctor and a wonderful elderly gentleman, after taking my pulse and consulting my horoscope, proscribed a bitter concoction that I was to boil and drink regularly.
it helped significantly.

But, this is an anecdote - personal experience is not data.
And I have not the slightest idea how a study on preventative benefits could be done and whom I would trust to do it.

Certainly no one affiliated with the USDA.
There are multiple complaints from respected scientists about systemic corruption in American healthcare policy.

Don't know if I would trust Chinese studies either.

When money and science collides, money always wins, because an honest scientist goes unpublished, and money just keeps shopping for the one that goes along.

[ethan]

Western doctors, especially young ones, rely heavily on tests. They often don't like gathering information from conversation & patients' records & simple observation (looking at tongue etc.). W/ good reason sometimes, they like "harder" data; nonetheless, some thinking should be done that often is not.
For example, constipation could be caused by excessive tea-drinking. If a doctor knows a patient drinks tea all day long, a good suggestion is for the patient to drink water etc. as much as he drinks tea.
Chinese medicine often uses its herbs etc. to counter imbalances that shop owners think their customers are suffering. What is prescribed is usually directly useless, but time or the placebo effect may work to help their customers; moreover, most of the herbs, etc. are harmless if taken in small quantities. Shop owners don't worry about killing someone w/ their advice.
(How doctors used to feel about telling patients over the phone at night, "Take 2 aspirin & call me in the morning.")
Mid-winterSun, TeaChat does not have private messaging now. (One can write a message but cannot send it.) Please use my e-mail, merrill23k@yahoo.com when you write me
Cheers

[jayinhk]

Here's an anecdote on Chinese Medicine for you:

Back in 2007 or 2008, I had bad bronchitis. I got it every winter, and every year, I was prescribed amoxicilllin to knock it out. That year, I didn't finish the course of amoxicillin, and the bronchitis came back in a bad way. So bad I was blowing my nose every ten minutes just to breathe and I couldn't talk for more than 20 seconds or so without coughing violently.

A student of mine offered to take me to a Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner in the Western District on HK Island. The practitioner was in his 80s and the store had been relatively unchanged since the 50s-60s era. As johnb said, it involves the taking of your pulse and looking at your tongue. He said I had a liver issue and told me I had to avoid beer, chicken and eggs for three days. I jokingly had my student tell him that that's all I ever ate. He didn't laugh.

For around $60, I was given three bags to boil up on three successive days. I was to boil water down to a single cup, and drink it (it took an hour or two of boiling). My Cantonese wasn't as good as it is now (it's still not all that by any means), so a lot of what transpired between my student and the practitioner was lost on me.

After boiling up the first bag, I found a bug in the Pyrex Visions pot I was using to boil up the medicine. I thought maybe it had fallen in with the herbs. I kept digging and found more...and they were scorpions! I called my student and she laughed for a good long while, and told me she hadn't told me about the scorpions because it would have scared me away from the treatment.

I was told it would take three days to recover. On the third night, I went to a standup comedy show with a buddy of mine. I had a glass of wine or two at the show and was worried about how it would affect my treatment. I was already feeling better by then.

When I woke up the next morning...I was right as rain. The TCM approach had worked faster than the antibiotics, which from experience took five days to get me back up to 100%, and wide spectrum antibiotics can really throw your system out of whack.

If I spoke better Cantonese, I'd always choose TCM over Western med for minor ailments. Traditional Chinese Medicine in HK is government regulated and the public health system here offers TCM treatment. TCM treatment is even covered by international insurance companies that operate in HK!

[Midwinter_Sun]

without quoting it is certainly harder to converse.
Ethan - you are ever so correct. I think in general, western medicine is very good at invasive procedures.

I have had surgery for broken bones, and the doctors were great, I have full function.
Those same western doctors could not identify a food intolerance I had that was causing indigestion for very long time.

it would have helped if they talked to me and identified the cause. They did not have the time, and the tests showed nothing. Only tests developed in the last 6 years could identify the cause, and by then I had self-diagnosed ( correctly, as it comes out ).

Prevention and patient oriented medicine is something Western medicine is notoriously bad at.
I will still go to a western doctor with a broken bone

That said - I will pick the eastern methods of tea, meditation, and a simple diet with lots of greens over any drugs western medicine suggests for prevention of disease.

Jay - I am not surprised at your recovery, not at all. They were practicing that medicine before we had books...