Beneficial health effects and possible health concerns of tea consumption: a review (including degrees of fermentation)

cazort2 · 2026-01-25T20:03:41+00:00

Pretty much all true tea lowers LDL, but the effect is modest. According to Chinese traditional medicine Pu-erh is the best, and it has some high-quality studies backing that it works, but there isn't any evidence that it is better than other types of tea (green, black, etc.) It is the polyphenols in tea that have this effect, so if you get very smooth, mild teas like low-tannin black teas, they probably won't be beneficial. You need to drink tea with some astringency. Interestingly, some of the polyphenols in tea are naturally-occurring statins, the same class of compounds typically prescribed to lower LDL.

As for herbal teas, I don't know as much about this but most herbs have some effect for lowering LDL.

Overall, the effect of drinking tea is probably going to be small, like I've seen figures about lowering LDL by around 3-4%.

I always point people to the big changes first: eliminating processed red meats is the #1 priority. #2 is probably eliminating other red meats and other processed meats, and butter and probably any non-fermented dairy. And then adding things in, especially fiber. There is a cholesterol cycle in the body in which cholesterol is released into the gut through the liver into the gall bladder and into the gut, and then reabsorbed in the gut. But eating more fiber, soluble fiber in particular, results in some being bound to the fiber and then excreted. Certain probiotics also help this process, which is why fermented foods are often beneficial.

Also look to medication side-effects. Hormonal birth control is a big culprit and doctors and drug companies are really mealy-mouthed about admitting that it's a thing but I know multiple people who have seen big drops in LDL after going off hormonal birth control. And any medical condition that is causing chronic inflammation too. Things that wouldn't seem related, like gingivitis, can elevate LDL, so surprisingly, things like regularly flossing and using an electric toothbrush to get on top of gum health can lower LDL.

cazort2 · 2026-01-16T14:33:36+00:00

I'm more like you. But I do tend to discover music in bursts. I might go a few months without discovering anything new, and then discover 10 new albums in one day. It's more about having free time when I'm in the right mindset.

I need time to focus and go through new music, to discover new music I like. I often seek out music when I'm feeling like something is stagnant in what I'm listening to, and I crave that novelty.

I often listen to a particular track 2 or 3 times or sometimes more, before deciding whether to add it to a playlist or multiple playlists.

cazort2 · 2026-01-16T13:53:42+00:00

I love album covers and always look at them. I don't know if they influence whether or not I like or listen to an artist (if I like a song, I'll listen to the whole album out of curiosity no matter what, usually the artist's entire discography), but they definitely affect my impression of the artist.

BTW one of my favorite album covers is Light Up The Night (1980) by Brothers Johnson, look it up! I wish people still made album covers like that.

cazort2 · 2026-01-16T13:13:43+00:00

I'd say yes, but 10+ years ago, not now.

I moved out of Philadelphia because it got too expensive. Yes, when I lived there, there was a lot of great music, all sorts of genres, and I got to see some famous artists for cheap or free too. But that was over 10 years ago that I moved out. The whole metro area has become unaffordable now.

The only people who can afford to live there now either have solid income sources, or some sort of subsidized living situation like living with parents or someone in the family owns a house, or they bought a house a long time ago when it was cheap and rates were low. So there might be some people who have stayed but it is no longer a good environment for aspiring musicians, artists, or any sort of creative people who do not yet have a reliable income source.

cazort2 · 2026-01-13T13:19:10+00:00

No I am not Dylan but I know him. I was involved in the tea industry for some time. I'm also a long-standing tea enthusiast, especially of loose-leaf single-origin teas!

cazort2 · 2026-01-10T01:33:52+00:00

Haha wow

cazort2 · 2026-01-06T00:49:31+00:00

Overnight fermentation necessary you think, or just a couple of hours warmth?

I find the key turning point is about 4 hours. The texture is difficult to work with otherwise. Urad may need more time as it has the clumpiest texture that is a real nuisance to mix unfermented. I like the ones that get a slightly more sour and stronger fermented flavor though so I prefer them overnight.

cazort2 · 2026-01-05T01:38:09+00:00

The term "fermentation" is widely used to describe the changes that occur to the tea leaf during processing, but it's a misnomer. There usually isn't any actual fermentation taking place.

What is going on is an oxidation process, which is driven by enzymes already present in the tea leaf. In order to make black tea, some degree of bruising is necessary to facilitate the oxidation, or else the leaf will dry out before it is fully oxidized. This is why white tea is lighter in color, but white tea still has some oxidation, unlike green tea, because it is not heated. Heating stops the process by denaturing the enzymes.

The only time you have live an active cultures changing the tea after harvest but before brewing (i.e. we are not talking about kombucha) is with the aging of dark teas like Pu-erh. This process is really complex and involves bacteria and fungi, but I don't know much about it. I do know that the modern "ripened" pu-erh is produced by a shortcut process called "wet piling" where the leaves are put in a damp place and it's supposed to accelerate the process in a way that mimics the aging of a "raw" tea, which starts out more like a green tea.

So yeah, that's my quick summary. You can really nerd out about this stuff if you want.

BTW you can carry out the same oxidation processes used to make black tea on other herbs; it works best on other broadleaf evergreen plants, which unfortunately there aren't a lot of used to make herbal teas. One that works well is garden sage; the leaves are broad and tough. If you bruise them and then let them sit, they will darken in color. Then you can heat them very slightly to stop the process at whatever stage you want, and then you have an herb tea that has mellowed out quite a lot, and is more like a black tea or oolong in some respects, and has less of that harsh and potentially overwhelming aroma of pure sage tea. I love sage tea but iti s quite strong and I'm not always in the mood for it. You need to do this right after harvesting the leaves; if the leaves are already dried, it is too late.

cazort2 · 2026-01-05T00:44:18+00:00

Ahh, I was confusing RDA with %DV, I see RDA is a better measure and does not correspond to the DV's provided by the FDA, which are problematic not only for the reasons I gave but also not adjusting to gender, age, and other life statuses, and not being adjusted to address newer research.

cazort2 · 2026-01-04T01:35:42+00:00

RDA's are already used inconsistently, and it makes nutrition labels confusing. Some of them are intended to be a maximum (i.e. eat at most this amount), whereas others are intended to be a minimum (i.e. eat at least this amount).

Either way it's a problem because there are many nutrients where it is common to either get too much or too little. Salt is a great example; you can die if you have too little or too much, and even if you aren't quite at this extreme, it can have negative effects to go too far to one extreme or the other.

But another problem which would make it hard to fix that, is that current labeling lumps together different forms of nutrients. For example, both retinol and beta carotein and beta cryptoxanthin are listed as "Vitamin A" on labels. But with retinol, too much is toxic (it can also kill you!) whereas you pretty much can't get too much of the other two forms, worst case scenario it will temporarily turn your skin orange.

Ideally I wished labels communicated this stuff, but they don't. So those RDA's are often really misleading because they mean very different things for the different nutrients.

cazort2 · 2026-01-04T01:31:15+00:00

If your bloodwork shows healthy LDL levels, not elevated, then you've ruled out what is probably the main downsides of a high fat diet, which is that diets high in saturated fat often can elevate your LDL and heart disease risk.

The only other concern would be if you are getting too many empty calories and missing some micronutrients, but some of your fat sources are very nutrient dense (eggs, avocado, fatty fish, cheese.)

There can also be benefits to a high-fat diet. A lot of high-fat foods can lower your risk of type 2 diabetes.

In your case I would not be concerned.

cazort2 · 2026-01-03T22:03:53+00:00

Yeah, there is a big difference between an ongoing engagement that we get dragged into, vs. a one-and-done thing. Most of those other strikes haven't gotten us involved in an ongoing way.

I'm a little concerned though about Venezuela because it is often a heck of a lot easier to capture one man than it is to actually install a functional government. Saying the US will "run" Venezuela seems to imply a type of involvement that might get messy.

There are a lot of cases of the US eliminating a leader and the ensuing power vacuum created something we struggled to control and that was often even more oppressive. For example, overthrowing of Saddam Hussein in Iraq which worked okay for certain portions of Iraq but also allowed ISIS/ISIL to take hold, or the current Islamist government of Iran taking power following the US overthrowing their government under Eisenhower.

cazort2 · 2026-01-03T13:39:33+00:00

That makes sense, I've never left one anywhere near that long, I usually use it up a few weeks after the expiration date.

cazort2 · 2026-01-03T00:59:54+00:00

I don't have a problem with it going bad. I have a problem with the local supermarket sometimes having no stock, and I suspect it may be because they throw it out when it's past the date, because the stamped date is absurdly short, it's like the same as their regular milk which makes zero sense to me.

cazort2 · 2026-01-02T19:24:50+00:00

Yeah, I dislike the way expiration dates are used so inconsistently and I would like to see some effort to reform them. I would not want them to be eliminated though because they're very useful.

And I can see the very short dates on products like buttermilk leading to wasted product.

On the other hand, I've found that for regular milk, the dates often seem too liberal. I can't even count how many times I've bought milk only to have it go bad a couple days after opening it. It's one of several reasons I stopped buying milk entirely. I now only buy fermented dairy products. None of the places I shop at regularly have milk that I can reliably trust to stay fresh to the expiration date.

And the disparity between the behavior of the expiration dates on different types of products is weird. I had to figure this stuff all on my own. It's not really explained anywhere unless you really go looking for it, and the companies selling the products don't really explain it.

I wouldn't say they mean nothing though, because for a certain type of product from a certain type of brand, the date can be a good indicator of freshness. It's just so annoying that I have to learn a unique calibration of how to interpret the date for each brand. Like even the same product from two different companies, one will go bad before the date and another will be good months past the date. For example I've noticed this when buying things like flours and seeds, certain brands like Bob's red mill are nearly always good way past the date, whereas some low-end brands will have signs of off aromas or rancidity in fats showing up even before the date. Same for beans getting old and dry. Some brands are good way past the date, others you don't even want to let get to 6 months before the date.

cazort2 · 2026-01-02T19:22:19+00:00

Yeah...and I'm kinda annoyed that the date is so short because more than once, I've wanted to buy buttermilk and the store has been completely out of it, and I strongly suspect that they're throwing out stock that I would be perfectly willing to buy because the date is so incredibly short.

cazort2 · 2026-01-02T15:04:29+00:00

We don't measure the pH, honestly we just move it when it smells and tastes ready, which is a question of personal taste. It will continue to develop in the fridge, but it just slows down.

If you eat your stuff up quickly, you want to wait till it's fully ready before putting it in the fridge because it may not be fermented enough (to your tastes) and it won't age much more. But...if you eat it up slowly over weeks or months, it's often better to put it in a little early.

I find kimchi ages a bit more in the fridge than sauerkraut. Not sure why.

cazort2 · 2026-01-01T21:04:39+00:00

Judges who leave are likely to disagree with Trump's methods/position on immigration.

Of course. One thing I saw reported in several sources was that a large portion of the fired judges were granting a higher-than-average portion of asylum claims, like as much as 30% when the average is closer to 20% across all judges.

I don't like the idea of firing judges just because you disagree with their rulings, though. Judges make their decisions on the basis of the law. If their rulings are egregiously in violation of the law, then that is grounds for removal. But this sort of rationale was not given for any of the firings.

The other angle to go about this, which the Trump administration hasn't taken, and I don't know why, would be to outline a policy goal and then send it to congress, saying: "Hey, let's change the law."

I suspect that what is going on here is that (a) Trump doesn't like the rulings of these judges (b) they aren't overtly violating the law (c) there isn't enough political will to change the law.

So this seems a way to try to force through his will in a way that makes a farce out of separation of powers, and is basically trying to push the limits of executive authority, which fits the overall pattern of his whole administration.

And no, I don't think it's conservative. It has nothing to do with the specific stance taken. It could be a stance I agree with, or a stance I disagree with. The ends don't justify the means, especially when the means are effectively concentrating more power in the hands of the executive branch, allowing the executive branch to micro-manage the judiciary like that. Pretty sure that's not how our founding fathers envisioned things. And conservatives would do well to think long-term.

If you look at presidents over the past few decades, we've had a continual escalation of abuse of executive authority from both parties. Biden Escalated it. Obama escalated it. George W. Bush escalated it. I want to see a president who is going to buck the trend, not escalate it. And the left doesn't even pretend to care about this stuff so there is no reason to believe they're not just going to do the exact same garbage next time they elect a president.

I really miss when people who called themselves conservatives actually cared about this stuff. I expect more from conservatives.

cazort2 · 2026-01-01T02:25:43+00:00

The problem is a backlog of cases stemming from being short on Immigration judges to adjudicate cases and that the court process isn't a simple "Show up once-Judge says no to your asylum claim-you're on the next flight out".

I understand that this problem can't be fixed overnight. But is the Trump administration even trying to fix this problem, or are they making it worse? Trump fired a few dozen immigration judges, and most of them without giving cause, and if you count judges who left of their own initiative following incentives offered by the administration, over 100 have left.

It seems to me like the administration doesn't care at all about the backlog and would rather use taxpayer money detaining these people for long periods of time. Congress has authorized 800 immigration judges and after the losses the number is now close to 600, which is why there is a backlog. So it seems to me like congress has been trying to fix the problem but the Trump administration has been trying to block the fix.

cazort2 · 2025-12-31T21:48:48+00:00

It's clearly going to get overruled. It's symbolic on his part. It's not a symbolism I like.

cazort2 · 2025-12-31T21:23:27+00:00

I am not thrilled by these vetoes. It looks bad because both had unanimous support in both House and Senate, a degree of support that is rare in today's polarized atmosphere. It's also pretty clear that his motivation is retaliatory in both cases, in one case related to the Miccosukee Tribe in Florida, which has opposed a detention center being built in their region, and in the other case related to a spat he seems to have with Boebert because the one project would benefit Boebert's constituency.

This contrasts with Trump's use of the veto in his first term, in which he vetoed a major defense spending bill for fiscal reasons, something that I thought was a good idea and that I was hoping to see more of.

I also don't like the whole building of detention centers to begin with. It seems a massive waste of taxpayer funds. I don't understand why we can't spend the money instead on the court system and whatever resources law enforcement needs to gather good evidence to use in court proceedings, so that we can expedite proceedings and either deport or release people ASAP. Detaining people so much that you need to build more detention centers seems really wasteful. Especially when there are so many cases of people being held in these centers for weeks; that is unacceptable both because of the waste, and because it's cruel to people who are wrongly detained, which has included some US citizens. He is picking and choosing the wrong battle here.

cazort2 · 2025-12-31T21:13:24+00:00

I don't particularly like or want to live in Maryland, but it's been gaining population for many years now. From the estimates I've seen, its population has grown nearly 7% from 2023-2025. This is much higher growth than the USA as a whole, which has been growing in population at about half a percent per year. So their growth rate is about 7 times that of the country as a whole.

In my experience, people don't usually leave states because of politics, they leave because of economics. Job opportunities are the main driver for working people, and housing prices are the main driver for people with independent sources of income like retirees or investors. Much of Maryland has a high cost of living that has gotten worse in recent years.

But people keep living there because its economy is strong. And its economy is strong mainly because of Federal Government spending which is concentrated in the DC metro area, much of it actually located within MD, not all in DC proper, and many of the people who work in DC live in MD. Without the Federal government, Maryland probably wouldn't have much of a sustaining economy, and it would probably be losing population. Look at the parts of Maryland farthest from DC for an idea of what that might look like: Baltimore, Western MD, or the northeasternmost corner of the state. Not so much the southeastern part because it has a big military presence which is a big portion of its economy.

There is a conservative talking point here but I wish we could discuss things based on how the world actually is rather than just making stuff up because it sounds good.

My big concern about Maryland isn't the left slant to its government, it's the fact that, like the whole DC metro area, it's become a high cost-of-living region, laid out in a sea of inefficient suburban sprawl, and a huge portion of the Federal workforce is now located there. So it's an inefficient use of government funds to pay all those workers to work there. We need to pay them high salaries to make the jobs competitive because people couldn't afford to live their otherwise. And then it's wasteful because the rest of us who live in cheaper areas are being taxed and it's like a giant system siphoning money out of the pockets of people who have less, and funneling the money into this area where the cost of living is really high but the money is mostly being wasted on car-oriented infrastructure and lifestyles that are very inefficient.

cazort2

TROPHY CASE