Healthy Tea Recommendations?

[Sthira]

I adore coffee. It's delicious, healthy, it keeps me motivated, and distracts the great dragging black dogs of depression.

But I got carried away. Now it's turned against me. Coffee makes me happy for hours, and then horribly anxious for even more hours. So after a long and sad decontamination journey I've finally ramped off. I truly miss it, though, and believe in coffee's magical powers, so I know I'll return back to it again someday.

Meanwhile, I'm transitioning back again to teas and wondered what world's healthiest brands you're drinking nowadays? White tea, green, hibiscus, what do you like, and where do you buy it?

[mccoy]

Sorry to hear about that, from your words an excessive concentration of caffeine must have disrupted mood homeostasis, causing for example  excessive peaks of dopamine and subsequent troughs. Or any other mechanisms which impinge detrimentally on the natural balance of neurotransmitter. Anxiety seems to be relatively common at very high dosages, > 300 mg/day. You may probably return to more moderate dosages, but moderate in this context means no more than 100-150 mg, 2-3 espressos.

Speaking of tea, I find I cannot drink it without a sweetener, the EGCG just gives me nausea. So I don't drink it, remembering the times when I drank it with tons of honey.

But I may add to your question: what kind of sweetener do you guys add to tea? Erythritol? Xilitol? Stevia? A mix?

[mccoy]

The dopaminergic action of caffeine has been discussed in this thread

There are also other mechanisms at work, the symptoms described by Shtira though fit well with the hypothesis of chronic augmentation of the dopamine flow by excessive antagonism at the adenosine receptors. Something similar to amphetamines (and cocaine) at a much lower scale.  The exhaustion of endogenous dopamine allegedly brings about lower and lower dopamine baseline concentration in the brain, causing depression and anxiety and addiction to the dopaminergic agent in an attempt to enjoy the peaks, until overdose and toxicity occur.

Edited September 20, 2022 by mccoy

[mccoy]

Sorry but there is more to comment on this topic: coffee to tea transition. Specifically, how much caffeine was your daily average input, and how much are you targeting with tea, since copious amounts of it may add up to nontrivial amounts of caffeine. Specifically, 4 cups of black tea may amount to 2 cups of black American coffee, on the average. From the caffeine standpoint you may want to limit yourself to white tea, better if containing a label with a specified quantity of this molecule.

[Saul]

Hi Sthira!

I drink a huge teapot of high quality Chinese white tea every morning; I brew it myself.  It's a much subtler, and I believe healthier, choice than coffee.  I purchase my tea on-line from Upton tea in Massachusetts.  (My wife drinks black Darjeeling tea from India -- IMO, that is more like coffee.)

  --  Saul

 

[Saul]

14 hours ago, mccoy said:

Speaking of tea, I find I cannot drink it without a sweetener

That's probably because you're drinking crappy tea.  I can't imagine sweetening good quality white tea.

  --  Saul

[Dean Pomerleau]

Hey Sthira. Sorry to hear about your struggles with mood and with coffee as a pick-me-up. 

I mix good quality sencha green tea with dried hibiscus flowers and homegrown dried mint and lemon balm to make it more flavorful and to add other micronutrients. 

--Dean 

[mccoy]

On 9/20/2022 at 11:14 PM, Saul said:

That's probably because you're drinking crappy tea.  I can't imagine sweetening good quality white tea.

  --  Saul

LOL, I had to answer to that. I'm not a tea master brewer, so I'm probably drinking crappy tea, I don't have much time to brew my own concoction and use commercial bagged (probably shitty) teas like earl grey with bergamot, I prefer also those scented with lemon, plausibly of equal crappiness although fit to my primordial tastes. I prefer black to green tea but my tastes may be bent according to the benefits of the brew.

So far I found that eritritol is pretty good to sweeten my teas, although after Saul's remarks I'm in doubt now that I can call them teas. I'll try and find the Sencha tea cited by Dean, but only if it can be found in bags.

Sorry for the above but actually Saul cited white tea, I'm not a great connoisseur of it but its delicate taste maybe can be enhanced by a modest amount of erythritol or stevia+erythritol, if Saul does not construe the above as a blasphemy...

[mccoy]

Black tea: in the morning (more caffeine)

Green tea: later in the day, possibly not after 2-3 PM (less caffeine)

Withe tea: at night (less caffeine) but being careful that it is actually of the less caffeinated types (there may be some variability in caffeine content).

[Saul]

3 hours ago, mccoy said:

LOL, I had to answer to that. I'm not a tea master brewer, so I'm probably drinking crappy tea, I don't have much time to brew my own concoction and use commercial bagged (probably shitty) teas like earl grey with bergamot, I prefer also those scented with lemon, plausibly of equal crappiness although fit to my primordial tastes. I prefer black to green tea but my tastes may be bent according to the benefits of the brew.

So far I found that eritritol is pretty good to sweeten my teas, although after Saul's remarks I'm in doubt now that I can call them teas. I'll try and find the Sencha tea cited by Dean, but only if it can be found in bags.

Sorry for the above but actually Saul cited white tea, I'm not a great connoisseur of it but its delicate taste maybe can be enhanced by a modest amount of erythritol or stevia+erythritol, if Saul does not construe the above as a blasphemy...

Hi McCoy!

My comment is only for white tea -- carefully brewed high quality white teas don't need sweetener -- the same is not true for black teas, even the expensive ones, such as the Darjeeling black tea that I buy for my wife -- those teas, like coffee, almost always are sweetened (my wife uses Splenda); and, like most black tea drinkers, she also uses milk.

McCoy, it's true that you can gently sweeten white tea with a sweetener -- I don't; a really high quality white tea, IMO, tastes better without.  And DEFINITELY NO MILK in white tea -- you'd get a mess.

Cheers,

  --  Saul

 

 

[mccoy]

57 minutes ago, Saul said:

And DEFINITELY NO MILK in white tea -- you'd get a mess.

Ah yes, I can surely agree with it! 

[drewab]

I’ve drank quite a bit of tea in my day and the best by far is here: https://matcha.com

It is a little more pricey than other brands, but the quality is second to none. 

[Sthira]

Thanks for the input, folks. 

 

Welp, after a 40 day hiatus from coffee, I'm back on it. Other than water it's the only beverage I drink, and consume about ~1,110 ml per day. I drink a cup (~340 ml) and add two cups to oatmeal as a sub for hot water. Over time I'll need to ramp up again as it loses effectiveness. I walk the tightrope between depression (not enough coffee) and anxiety (too much coffee).

 

Coffee has too many benefits for me to ignore.  Its anti-depression effects are far and away better than any pharma I've tried. No comparison. And coffee (believe or not) even rivals psychedelics (Psilocybe semilanceata, "liberty caps"). I don't think the effects are entirely due to "caffeine" (>1,000 compounds in coffee, science doesn't seem to know much, or why). 

 

The differences between micro dosing shrooms versus coffee, of course, are little studied; so the afflicted manage on their own. For me, small works better than large, but small grows large again, so I fast, return to baseline, and begin the cycle all over again. 

 

Teas (including the sacred white and matcha) don't do anything for me. But I'm probably drinking "crappy tea," too. Yet in the battle of crappy, crappy coffee at least does something rather than nothing.

Edited September 27, 2022 by Sthira

[BrianA]

News article from yesterday:

 

Coffee drinking is associated with increased longevity

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/09/220926200838.htm

Edited September 27, 2022 by BrianA

[mccoy]

13 hours ago, Sthira said:

Its anti-depression effects are far and away better than any pharma I've tried.

That is surprising, given the wide range of antidepressants in use today which do exhibit their effectiveness, usually. One one side, your genetic makeup makes you unlucky (refractory to SSRIs and similar), on the other it makes you lucky (you avoid the known side effects of SSRIs and similar). And. according to the latest article posted by Brian, you are reaping the longevity benefits!

I too realized that coffee must have chemical synergies that cacao and tea simply do not have, maybe it's the adrenergic effect or something similar which leverages the dopaminergic boost. 

Back to depression, I would rather try medical-grade psilocybin rather than natural mushrooms, since the dosage of active compounds in the latter is very variable and unknown a priori. I don't know if the FDA has approved psilo yet.

 

By the way, do you have increased blood pressure with all that caffeine?

 

Edited September 28, 2022 by mccoy

[Sthira]

13 hours ago, mccoy said:

I would rather try medical-grade psilocybin rather than natural mushrooms, since the dosage of active compounds in the latter is very variable and unknown a priori

 

So I should stop gathering magic mushrooms from area cow poop?

I moved to rural America, psilocybin is literally everywhere. Treasure fields! I don't think people here know about it? Or if they do: mum silence. Maybe they fear mushrooms? That's pretty common here. But once I learned to distinguish the liberty cap mimics from the real liberty caps, which isn't difficult, the farm fields have become nice bountiful medicine chests. 

I don't have high blood pressure, just normal, average, a little low from CR, but I don't drink that much coffee. Three cups and I'm good. I'm sensitive, though, a slow metabolizer.

Grazie tanto per i tuoi approfondimenti! 

[mccoy]

22 hours ago, Sthira said:

Grazie tanto per i tuoi approfondimenti! 

Ah Ah, è stato un piacere!

Very interesting to know about the abundance of psilocybin in rural America, I had no idea.

I'm absolutely no expert about hallucinogens, but I know well that every intervention with psychopharmaceuticals must follow rigorous application protocols, such as start with a low dosage, increase progressively and stop at the minimum effective dose (according to individual variability). Oscillations in dosages are often deleterious to neuronal circuits. So, I wonder if this protocol can be followed with natural products which are free of charge but whose concentration in psilocybin is unknown.

[Mike41]

On 9/27/2022 at 12:40 PM, Sthira said:

Thanks for the input, folks. 

 

Welp, after a 40 day hiatus from coffee, I'm back on it. Other than water it's the only beverage I drink, and consume about ~1,110 ml per day. I drink a cup (~340 ml) and add two cups to oatmeal as a sub for hot water. Over time I'll need to ramp up again as it loses effectiveness. I walk the tightrope between depression (not enough coffee) and anxiety (too much coffee).

 

Coffee has too many benefits for me to ignore.  Its anti-depression effects are far and away better than any pharma I've tried. No comparison. And coffee (believe or not) even rivals psychedelics (Psilocybe semilanceata, "liberty caps"). I don't think the effects are entirely due to "caffeine" (>1,000 compounds in coffee, science doesn't seem to know much, or why). 

 

The differences between micro dosing shrooms versus coffee, of course, are little studied; so the afflicted manage on their own. For me, small works better than large, but small grows large again, so I fast, return to baseline, and begin the cycle all over again. 

 

Teas (including the sacred white and matcha) don't do anything for me. But I'm probably drinking "crappy tea," too. Yet in the battle of crappy, crappy coffee at least does something rather than nothing.

I agree. Tea is ok for a treat, but coffee is indeed, as you say, a powerful mood enhancer! 

[Alex K Chen]

How do you import from low-pollution areas? A LOT of tea is from China, but teas from China is often more contaminated -https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/how-to-pick-a-healthy-tea

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5800232/

https://medium.com/labdoor/can-organic-tea-cause-heavy-metal-poisoning-e511c9130b3f

===

I'm only starting to really brew looseleaf green tea as of late last week, and hate myself for not doing it frequently earlier. There's the classic "pour boiling water into a teacup" thing which I only learned earlier this year. Plus, tea seems to work better than Adderall on me (I don't know what happened to my response to Adderall, I seem to "freeze" on it more than before, but it's okay if I just need tea)

Tea is one of the most potent pro-longevity interventions for *so* many reasons, such as appetite suppression. Even early Taoists associated it with "eternal youth"

I also fill the container to the very brim with leaves, which massively increases the dose of caffeine, but tea is safer than coffee in large amounts.

Ideally you want a tin to minimize microplastics
https://www.republicoftea.com/jasmine-pearls-full-leaf-loose-green-tea/p/v09995/
https://www.crsociety.org/topic/18164-green-tea-is-associated-with-reduced-all-cause-mortality-risk/#comment-44828

I also once threw up after eating raw Persian oolong tea at MILA last year, which caused some aversion for a while (I did eat tea leaves raw for a while...)

https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/how-to-pick-a-healthy-tea

https://medium.com/labdoor/can-organic-tea-cause-heavy-metal-poisoning-e511c9130b3f

https://www.leafscore.com/grocery/the-best-organic-and-lead-free-green-tea/

Mike Lustgarten uses Ocha & Co tea (imported from Japan)

 

Edited August 14, 2023 by InquilineKea

[drewab]

On 9/24/2022 at 6:43 PM, drewab said:

I’ve drank quite a bit of tea in my day and the best by far is here: https://matcha.com

It is a little more pricey than other brands, but the quality is second to none. 

To follow up on this, I still stand by my statement above as it really is a high quality product. Having said that, I have been drinking this Organic Japanese Matcha in part due to it's price and availability (i.e. being at my local Costco). 

It can be also be found on Amazon here or the Elan's Organics here. 

[Alex K Chen]

https://x.com/georgejrjrjr/status/1848410673564229707

i also use whole foods tea bc im often lazy

Edited October 21 by Alex K Chen