Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, chances are you've heard about some of the potential health benefits of green tea and its extracts, like antioxidants. Green tea comes from the leaves of the Camellia synesis plants that have not undergone the same fermentation and oxidation process used to make black tea. Green tea has a higher concentration of antioxidants known as polyphenols than other types of tea. But the pale brew hasn't always
been so hailed. Back in the Victorian era, it was said to cause hallucinations. Rumors warned that sippers might see ghosts.
In the eighteen nineties, the land Set Medical Journal published a study noting the negative effects of green tea, including stomach problems and fluttering of the heart, citing a woman profiled in Scottish Medical Journal who became hysterical after drinking green tea on an empty stomach instant only physicians calmed down by administering opium to further cement green tea's reputation.
Author Sheridan LeFanu, an Irish mystery writer whose eighteen seventy two collection of Tales featured the aptly named Green Tea, latched on to this idea and used it in the short story that captured the public's imagination. Lefano's Green Tea takes place in the early eighteen hundreds and recounts the plight of one mister Jennings, a clergyman who sees the evil spirit of a monkey and turns to his doctor
for help. His doctor rejects the idea that something supernatural is happening, and after discovering that Jennings drinks green tea before bed, the doctor claims the green tea is to blame. The doctor contends that the green tea has built up in Jennings body and is effecting his central nervous system, causing him to hallucinate. While the story's scientific explanation that green tea builds up in the body is false, it
didn't seem completely implausible. After all, Drinking too much of some substances, like beer or other alcohol, can cause both temporary and permanent issues with reality perception, and there's another crucial kernel of truth. In the seventies, green tea was an imported and expensive delicacy, so to increase its quantity and its shelf life. Purveyors added a variety of other things to the tea leaves, ranging from iron filings to
plants like hazelwood or hawthorne. They also supplemented green tea's color by adding dye in the form of natural additives like sheep dung and chemical colorance like Prussian blue. In fact, green tea's identity and flavor had become so muddled and diluted that when tea merchants attempted to sell pure green tea free from fillers, people didn't believe it was actually
green tea and refused to buy it. Strange additives aside, regular amounts of green tea do not cause hallucinations unless you drink at an ordinate amount of it or anything else that contains caffeine one two nine studies from Latrobe University tested people drinking various doses of caffeine and measured how much it would take to actually hallucinate. Participants who drank nine cups of green tea or three cups of coffee were three times more likely to hear voices and
see objects that were not there. So, while it's technically possible to hallucinate by ingesting massive amounts of caffeine via green tea. It would require a great deal of the beverage and it wouldn't build up in one system to have a cumulative effect either, So evil monkeys aside, Green tea is good for you in moderation. Today's episode was written by Laurie L. Dove and produced by Tyler Clang.
To learn more about the colorful history of green tea, check out the episode of our compatriot podcast Stuff to Blow Your Mind called the Myth of green Tea Hallucinations, And of course, for more on this and lots of other probably not hallucinatory topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com.