Hot Tea Midday Keeps the Hunger Away
If you’re subscribed to my LinkedIn newsletter, “Transparency in Healthcare”, and if you read the last edition called, “We Brought this on Ourselves”, and if you watched the video I recorded with Madeline Clark, a pharmacist at Moose Pharmacy who runs the Project Impact: CGM Access program they were selected to try out with their patients (that’s a lot of “IFs” and I probably lost about 99% of you right there in the first run on sentence), then you heard me say that I usually fast through breakfast and lunch by drinking hot liquids like coffee and tea.
Because I like variety, I try out many different types of teas so I don’t get bored. I picked up this one yesterday while shopping at Aldi. I bought it originally because I know that the anti-inflammatory properties of ginger and turmeric are good for you, but I didn’t know I was in for a tasteful treat. At $1.89 per box with 20 tea bags inside that’s roughly 9.5 cents per bag. Not a bad deal and WAY better for you than an appetite suppressant in some capsule form and DEFINITELY better for you than any version of semaglutide, GLP-1, or whatever brand name label you want to use to describe the brutally expensive injectables that have taken America (and soon the world) by storm.
Benner Tea Company Ginger Turmeric Tea sold at Aldi for $1.89 per box. That’s 9.5 cents per tea bag.
When I first started doing intermittent fasting, I found that my morning coffee kept me satisfied until around 10:30am (especially if I poured it into a double-walled aluminum cup that keeps things hot for a pretty long time). By that time of the morning, I’m ready to get up from my desk and put a cup of water with a tea bag in the microwave for 4 minutes. This gives me time to rest my eyes from the computer screen anyway. When the microwave stops and the familiar sound beeps to tell me “hot tea is ready”, of course it needs a couple of extra minutes to cool to sipping temperature. Tiny sips of hot tea allows just enough liquid to hit my tummy and keep hunger away until noon. The properties in the ingredients are something I can get behind as well. Nothing bad for you here. And, this is just me, but when I put my lips on the cup and take a sip, the flavor bouquet reminds me of (don’t laugh)…Fruity Pebbles :) I’m just being honest. I said don’t laugh. Just go buy a box and try it for yourself.
It certainly doesn’t need warning labels, side-effect disclaimers, clinical studies showing the major health problems that await some who may experience gastroparesis, muscle wasting, and many of the other scary outcomes we’re starting to see from the franken-drugs that are bankrupting employer health plans across the country. The NC State Health Plan was right to exclude these drugs for the treatment of weight loss. Though big pharma paid writers in major publications to demonize them for it, I believe time will tell that they made the right decision on behalf of the State of North Carolina and the employees who depend on the NC State Health Plan. This change becomes effective tomorrow, April 1, 2024.
The other thing I like when I push through the breakfast and lunch hours with only hot liquid as my sustenance is that I know my cells are going through “autophagy”. What’s that? In my layman’s terms, it’s the internal garbage disposals in each cell, eating up bad stuff that causes cells to mutate, turn into cancer, and other prerequisites for disease. This would be highly preferrable to what semaglutide drugs do. Those drugs actually make the food in your stomach stay there for way longer than it should. Let’s face it, the American diet is mostly terrible. Why would you want to force it to stay in your stomach (where it can do damage) longer than necessary? It’s just not a good idea.
But make no mistake, the GLP-1s main function is to put you into a state of intermittent fasting. The same exact state you can achieve for a few cents per day if you’ll just try it. It took me about 2-3 weeks to see this become a reality for me. If you’re yelling at me through the computer screen right now, stop it! I know the struggle is real. I’ve lived it. But, this is my honest, personal experience and I’m just telling you what I’ve come to realize after decades of trying everything else.
Well, I guess that’s enough for now. I hope you’ll subscribe to my podcast, Healthcare Solutions on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, where I pick apart topics like this and others with the nation’s experts. If you’re an employer and you’re wondering how to get a handle on runaway healthcare costs…let’s talk!