Chawang: Basically, statin is used in modern medicine to lower cholesterol. It does this by stopping the liver from making as much cholesterol as normal.
It is thought that high cholesterol is bad, but new research disagrees. Cholesterol is so important that, if food does not give you enough, your liver will make it for you (up to ~1400mg worth). Conventional wisdom states that high cholesterol by itself will give you heart problems and clogged arteries.
Statin, which is given to prevent clogged arteries and heart problems, is also known to cause a number of physical problems in addition to lowering liver cholesterol production. These things include memory damage and muscle damage.
I am trying to find out if there was a study showing just how much statin gets out of pu’erh leaves and into the brew itself. I was concerned that an infusion might result in enough statin entering the body to cause harm.
Leo: I had typed up a response, but the new captcha alternative and my browser at work really do not get along. Basically, you are correct – I meant to type nano grams and not milligrams. However, I have discovered that the highest content pu’erh contains something around 4μg (micrograms).
Average pill does appears to be in the 4-5 mg (milligram) range.
So I am probably fretting over nothing. Assuming 100% of the statin infused out, I’d need to drink 1,000 cups / day at 4μg per cup to reach the average dose.
M.
