[Dominique]

What is everyone's thoughts on getting their herbal exposure through teas versus taking so many pills...I would imagine the teas would be easier on the body....thanks

[ILoveCold]

I'm not an expert but extracts that are standardized to contain a fixed amount of ingredient is usually more effective. (for an example red reishi extracts that are standardized to %30 polysaccharided).

I usually use herbal tea for things that aren't available in pill form in where i live, for an example spearmint tea.

[Heaven's Night]

All of these thing require decently high doses to work. Tea is unlikely to deliver such doses, but can be used to reinforce the existing hormone balance. Question is, what need for actual body changes there is? Knowing that, act accordingly. Herbal program can give some changes, but nothing spectacular or fast. Conventional HRT and certain NBE programs is what delivers the results, but those include actual bioidentical hormones.

[prostatenipple]

I'm not sure that it's so cut and dried.

For example, you get some people saying extracts are good.
And you get some people saying extracts are not good.

Specifically this seems to be the case for PM - with a clear preference for raw powdered herb / root rather than extracts.

HN's reply about HRT is true - real hormones are the best way to go.

With herbs / roots, you can do some effective NBE programs but I doubt teas will have strong enough concentrations.


i.e. how many preparations of tea would you need to consume in one day to get the equivalent of 1000mg to 1500mg of PM?
Would a person be comfortable drinking so much liquid, can it easily dissolve into a liquid?
And how much time would a persons spend boiling the water, mixing the ingredients into the tea, cleaning etc?

The old girly chan board thread had advice to drink several cups of spearmint tea (5ar inhibitor) per day. That's just for spearmint. You'd also need more cups of tea for the other herbs.

Pills and capsules are just so much easier to manage.

Another angle is taste. Do all the herbs you need to take taste nice?
Good examples of this are maca and tribulus.
Maca powder via spoon just makes me want to gag. Tribulus was so stupidly bitter that I vowed to never buy powder again.

So I reckon tea would be too annoying and weakly dosed to be effective.