Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how stupwork
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey you welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Christian Seger.
Speaker 1: So I had an epiphany a couple of days ago
Speaker 1: that's completely turned my life around, and it spawned the
Speaker 1: idea for this episode. Ye. Yeah. For the last almost
Speaker 1: twenty years, I have believed that if you drink too
Speaker 1: much green tea, you will eventually start hallucinating. And uh,
Speaker 1: it all came from a horror story that I read
Speaker 1: in college in a class. My professor didn't correct that
Speaker 1: false assumption that was in this story. We talked about
Speaker 1: the story and its contents, but we didn't talk about
Speaker 1: the fact that you can't actually hallucinate. Well, we'll get
Speaker 1: into that you can. But but green tea was, at
Speaker 1: the time Victorian Aire assumed to cause people hallucinations or hysteria.
Speaker 1: You know, this is this is interesting because I believe
Speaker 1: there was this American Life that aired years back, and
Speaker 1: the at least the opening bit was about these little
Speaker 1: mistaken ideas that we sometimes have in our head, like
Speaker 1: stuff that's it's not important enough that it gets completely
Speaker 1: ruled out or corrected. Early on, but you end up
Speaker 1: just holding onto it, like in the In the bit,
Speaker 1: there was a there was a particular woman who always
Speaker 1: thought that unicorns were real. She just she didn't really
Speaker 1: look into the matter. She just had it in her mind.
Speaker 1: This is a real animal. I've totally met people who
Speaker 1: have thought they're real too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: was like that. And I was so embarrassed when I
Speaker 1: realized the truth. But um, I mean, it's not like
Speaker 1: I've avoided green tea. In fact, I'm drinking it right
Speaker 1: now as we recording this episode. But uh, I've made
Speaker 1: sure like I don't drink too much because that's what
Speaker 1: I had learned in this class. Well, I mean, moderation
Speaker 1: and all things right, And it doesn't seem like it's
Speaker 1: that unrealistic. There are plenty of substances where if you
Speaker 1: drink too much of it, weird or bad things can happen,
Speaker 1: you know, not to people who drink alcohol tend to
Speaker 1: know do not drink too much alcohol. If you drink
Speaker 1: too much coffee, you may get a bit jit ury
Speaker 1: and weird. So the idea that if you drink too
Speaker 1: much green tea you might have some level of mild hallucination.
Speaker 1: It's not unrealistic, and it turns out that there's a
Speaker 1: little bit a little bit of truth to it. But
Speaker 1: the the whole myth just spun completely out of control. Uh,
Speaker 1: Like I said, during the Victorian era, but primarily because
Speaker 1: of this short horror story called Green Tea by Sheridan
Speaker 1: Lafanu Uh. He was an Irish writer of Gothic mysteries
Speaker 1: and ghost stories. Um. This story was first published in
Speaker 1: the United States in five but it was originally published
Speaker 1: in England in eighteen seventy two. It was in his
Speaker 1: collection called in a Glass Darkly Uh. And just for context,
Speaker 1: that public cation that was only a year before he died,
Speaker 1: so he was kind of at the end of his life.
Speaker 1: I was rereading the story for this episode as well,
Speaker 1: and the story contextually, I think takes place much earlier
Speaker 1: than that. I think it's like the beginning part of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. And this is very much a stuffy
Speaker 1: British ghost story. When you totally not not to not
Speaker 1: to hate on that type of ghost story, sometimes that's
Speaker 1: exactly what I'm in the mood for. But this is
Speaker 1: a British intellectual encounter of something kind of weird that
Speaker 1: challenges his Britishness, but ultimately his Britishness is enough to
Speaker 1: overcome the anti Britishness. Yeah. Absolutely. This is one of
Speaker 1: those rare stories, especially for the time, to where it's
Speaker 1: a horror story, but it chooses science over the supernatural
Speaker 1: for its explanation, which is where the whole great Tea
Speaker 1: things that comes from. Although it just turns out that
Speaker 1: the scientific explanation in this story was just as superficial. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love a good, ultimately phony scientific explanation in an
Speaker 1: old horror story. There was a horror movie years and
Speaker 1: years back, I guess the nineteen seventies Horror Express. Did
Speaker 1: you ever see wonderful film as Christopher Lee in it? Uh?
Speaker 1: Teddy Sevalis, Kelly Savalis Uh A Siberian train a hammer movie,
Speaker 1: I believe it was. And there's a there's like an
Speaker 1: undead Neanderthal type creature and it's it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: But the big scientific moment is when they discussed that
Speaker 1: you can like look at the molecules and you can
Speaker 1: basically look at an eye under a microscope and see
Speaker 1: the things it saw or something completely ridiculous and totally
Speaker 1: blast me out of the movie even in a horror
Speaker 1: movie about undead neandertal. Yeah, yeah, no, I think you
Speaker 1: know that would be an interesting thing for us to tackle,
Speaker 1: is like scientific misassumptions that we've we've had over the
Speaker 1: years from various like sci fi, fantasy and uh, horror
Speaker 1: explanations for things. So the story Green Tea goes like this,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna spoil and almost a hundred and fifty year
Speaker 1: old story for you here, so brace yourselves. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: this guy named Mr Jennings. He's a clergyman and he
Speaker 1: keeps seeing the evil spirit of a monkey. Uh, and
Speaker 1: he turns to a doctor for help. The doctor rejects
Speaker 1: the idea that something supernatural is happening. Oh. This is
Speaker 1: Dr Hacilius, by the way, who's a reoccurring character. He is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole book, the whole collection of short stories are
Speaker 1: are written from his perspective, I think. And he's kind
Speaker 1: of like he's like a proto Sherlock Holmes. But he's
Speaker 1: a doctor and he but he knows everything, and he
Speaker 1: like he does that Sherlock Holmes thing where he like,
Speaker 1: uh just like says a bunch of facts about people
Speaker 1: without them like telling him anything just to like show
Speaker 1: off how smart he is, how how logical he is. Anyways, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so his whole thing is there's nothing supernatural happening here.
Speaker 1: What's going on is you've been drinking green tea for
Speaker 1: years every night before you go to bed, Mr Jennings,
Speaker 1: and it's in your nervous system, and that's what's making
Speaker 1: you see this evil monkey and it eventually drives Jenning
Speaker 1: to Jennings to commit suicide. Uh. And the end of
Speaker 1: the story is essentially the doctor how do how do
Speaker 1: you say his name again? Hascilius has Cilius is how
Speaker 1: I was reading him. Okay, so he, you know, basically
Speaker 1: is like, well there's one for science. Like, it's too
Speaker 1: bad that he, you know, killed himself. But he seemed
Speaker 1: like a good man. But that's what happens when you
Speaker 1: drink too much green tea, you know. I have to
Speaker 1: say when I when I went into this story and
Speaker 1: I had not I had not read this one previously.
Speaker 1: This one was new to me. I was expecting a
Speaker 1: far more racist and xenophobic tale. Yeah, and it it
Speaker 1: really doesn't have It really doesn't have much in the
Speaker 1: way of xenophobia racism at least on the on the surface, Well,
Speaker 1: there isn't a lot of if I remember correctly, they
Speaker 1: don't even really reference the sort of Chinese origin of
Speaker 1: tea in it that much, right, right, Yeah, Like I
Speaker 1: went back through it and I did the word search.
Speaker 1: It's like, all right, let's see if they're a needs
Speaker 1: specific means of Asia China and not so much it. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: it does raise a couple of questions that I think
Speaker 1: can point to certain you know, mild racist store xenophobic ideas,
Speaker 1: such as drinking a lot of green tea makes you
Speaker 1: see ghost monkeys? Then does that mean everyone in in
Speaker 1: Asia is walking around seeing ghost monkeys? Are just the
Speaker 1: average street in China is just littered with ghost monkey
Speaker 1: It's just yeah, it's just a part of everyday life.
Speaker 1: And this one guy just couldn't handle it. The ghost
Speaker 1: monkey isn't really that malicious, and in fact, I think
Speaker 1: there's even a scene where he like goes to touch
Speaker 1: it in his hand, just passes through it. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe it's the equivalent of the little uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the little waving cat toy that you see everything. You
Speaker 1: just get used to seeing ghost monkeys everywhere, menacing it.
Speaker 1: I think, Um, I think what it speaks to about
Speaker 1: the context that this was written and actually is that
Speaker 1: xenophobia wasn't overt right, it was just like the Chinese
Speaker 1: and the origin of these products was invisible in English
Speaker 1: society at that time, and so they just didn't talk
Speaker 1: about it, didn't think about it, didn't even consider, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we have uh problems with green tea here, but why
Speaker 1: would we even think about what's happening with the people
Speaker 1: in China drinking it? Right? I think that I think
Speaker 1: that's what my explanation would be for why they're not
Speaker 1: in there. But there's there's some really interesting stuff contextually
Speaker 1: going on with green tea at the time, and so
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna establish that first, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a look at what's actually going on with
Speaker 1: green tea with the caveat that Robert and I quickly
Speaker 1: found of researching this episode. There is a lot of
Speaker 1: research about green tea out there, like too much for
Speaker 1: anyone human being to read in the lifetime. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you follow any particular science news outlets, or if
Speaker 1: you do you look at the studies that are coming out,
Speaker 1: green tea is just always hitting. It's like green tea, coffee,
Speaker 1: and red wine pretty much. If you want to find
Speaker 1: a study on any of those three things that relates
Speaker 1: to any particular part of your anatomy or life or
Speaker 1: functionality as a as an organism, it's out there. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of this Lewis Black bit that he used
Speaker 1: to do about milk, and he would talked right, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the study comes out and it says milks good for you,
Speaker 1: and then another study comes out and it says milks
Speaker 1: bad for you, and it switches back and forth like
Speaker 1: every week, and he's just like, I don't know what
Speaker 1: to do with this. You know, that was a terrible
Speaker 1: Lewis but but yeah, basically green tea is kind of
Speaker 1: the same, except for the now we're not getting that
Speaker 1: many studies that are like, green tea is bad for you.
Speaker 1: We're getting oh, it's so good for you, can do this,
Speaker 1: it can do that, it can do this, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the level to which it is good for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. So uh. But what was going on at
Speaker 1: the time that Green Tea was written was basically the
Speaker 1: medical field was really pulling away from the supernatural and
Speaker 1: hyper focusing on science. So that's why you know, we've
Speaker 1: talked before about how uh like trace this back a
Speaker 1: couple hundred years for this to John d where the
Speaker 1: science field at the time very much incorporated aspects of
Speaker 1: the supernatural into it. Now at this period of time,
Speaker 1: as Victorian era, uh, they're pulling away from that, really
Speaker 1: focusing on science. So they're saying voices and visions that
Speaker 1: are seen by people were really they were associated with
Speaker 1: a false perception of their senses rather than actual ghosts
Speaker 1: or demons. And some of the ideas that surrounded this
Speaker 1: were connected to human blood and how it circulated from
Speaker 1: the heart to the brain. So they're trying to be science,
Speaker 1: but they were just you know, it wasn't very empirical.
Speaker 1: The idea was um that like when you hang your
Speaker 1: head down and then you quickly raise it up, you know,
Speaker 1: you see spots or lights because you're getting a head rush.
Speaker 1: And this Victorian kind of science explanation was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's got to be the explanation for problems like
Speaker 1: this green t situation. So yeah, the the story itself
Speaker 1: seemed progressive for the time, right because he was like, a, ha,
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as a. It's like Scooby Doo
Speaker 1: at the end, and it's like there's no ghost, it's
Speaker 1: green tea. But the medical logic is not correct at all.
Speaker 1: And here I am almost a hundred and fifty years
Speaker 1: later and I totally bought it for a good chunk
Speaker 1: of my life. Um So what was going on was
Speaker 1: by the eight seventies there was a shift away from
Speaker 1: green tea toward black tea. And the reason why was
Speaker 1: black tea was cheaper to produce because it was sourced
Speaker 1: directly from British plantations that were in India and Ceylon,
Speaker 1: and therefore consumers thought that it was more likely to
Speaker 1: be of high quality because they knew where it was
Speaker 1: coming from, like these we're British managed plantations, right, and
Speaker 1: that it was being cut uh with all kinds of
Speaker 1: weird things, various plants, iron filings. Will get to that
Speaker 1: in a minute. Going back to this story, though, we
Speaker 1: gotta turn to one of our stuff to blow your
Speaker 1: mind experts that we often summon up. He's been a
Speaker 1: former guest on the show A. S. T. Joshi and Uh.
Speaker 1: He wrote in his Unutterable Horror book, he has a
Speaker 1: long section about the story Green Tea and leaf a
Speaker 1: news writings, and he says, quote, there's a certain amount
Speaker 1: of evidence that in a story written only ten years
Speaker 1: after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, the monkey
Speaker 1: represents from a Christian perspective, the rejection or at least
Speaker 1: the potential for the rejection of God and the entire
Speaker 1: Christian worldview. So that maybe puts a little bit into
Speaker 1: perspective about this whole science versus supernatural thing. But then
Speaker 1: also I didn't realize this. He points out that Lafoneu
Speaker 1: was apparently a follower of this Christian UH like break
Speaker 1: off group called sweden borgi Ism I think and UH
Speaker 1: named after a guy who from Sweden whose last name
Speaker 1: was Swedenborg. Uh. And I didn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: time to dive down that shoot, but apparently, uh, Josh
Speaker 1: he sees Green Tea as being like a morality tale
Speaker 1: from the standpoint of somebody with that belief system. Interesting,
Speaker 1: you know. I ran across a two thousand nine gender
Speaker 1: studies article by this guy, Daniel Lewis of Ball State University,
Speaker 1: and he argued that the story is ultimately about the
Speaker 1: need for a closely guarded and bound male body and
Speaker 1: identity at the time and read a quick quote from it.
Speaker 1: Here says Hissilius argues that there is a fluid whose
Speaker 1: nature is spiritual quote though not immaterial, that circulates through
Speaker 1: the brain. It is through the abuse of various substances
Speaker 1: quote green tea is one that enables a surface of
Speaker 1: the brain to be quote unduly exposed on which disembodied
Speaker 1: spirits can operate contained within. Hissilius's theories are a warning
Speaker 1: for men against the use of foreign substances like green tea.
Speaker 1: But we can add the exposure to foreign text and
Speaker 1: I he is as well that served to unnaturally expose
Speaker 1: areas of the body. To be healthy, the male body
Speaker 1: must be regulated, controlled and closed off, not leaky like
Speaker 1: Jennings body at the end of the story. Huh. That's
Speaker 1: an interesting argument, especially in lieu of what I was
Speaker 1: just earlier saying about, like the invisibility of the Chinese
Speaker 1: in this story, which is there's no discussion about them
Speaker 1: or the origin of this tea. Uh So, that's sort
Speaker 1: of like he's implying that exposure to foreign ideas or
Speaker 1: materials is the idea behind this story, right, the sort
Speaker 1: of the menace behind the story but at the same time,
Speaker 1: like it's never explicit, it's just a completely implicit horse story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting to think on the whole, like the
Speaker 1: threat of the farm, because of course foreign things do
Speaker 1: change you. They open you up to new ideas, and
Speaker 1: that's wonderful. I wholly embrace that. But but at the time,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to draw that distinction between green and black tea.
Speaker 1: When black tea it's elf is an import it is
Speaker 1: a foreign thing that has been acquired by the colonial power,
Speaker 1: as has so much in the in the domain of
Speaker 1: the British Empire. Yeah, and from what I was reading,
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately this just comes down to making money, uh,
Speaker 1: and that like black tea was Uh, you made more
Speaker 1: money off of black tea because it was drier and
Speaker 1: it was subsequently easier to pack into a ship, so
Speaker 1: you could you could pack more of it for travel
Speaker 1: and selling it in Great Britain. And then there was
Speaker 1: also the factor of they were saying, well, once we
Speaker 1: get the green tea over there, we want to make
Speaker 1: it last a little bit longer, so we'll add some
Speaker 1: I don't know, hazelwood, or we'll add uh the iron
Speaker 1: filings I mentioned earlier into it, and so everybody was
Speaker 1: drinking this adulterated green tea, to the point that apparently,
Speaker 1: like when when unique sellers would would stand up and say, like,
Speaker 1: we are only selling pure green tea, people wouldn't believe
Speaker 1: it was green tea because they look at it and go,
Speaker 1: that's the wrong color. I don't want that. That's not
Speaker 1: actually green tea. Interesting. I mean, of course, it's one
Speaker 1: thing we'll touch on getting again here, is that ultimately,
Speaker 1: a T is any hot water that has something added
Speaker 1: to it, herbs or and and um, you know, dried
Speaker 1: leaves of something. Uh. You have various concoctions that are
Speaker 1: technically a T if you want to get get even
Speaker 1: more vague with your definition. Just a cup of hot
Speaker 1: water without anything in it can be and has been
Speaker 1: referred to as tea in various texts, particularly and in
Speaker 1: Chinese text Yeah. I have a friend I was telling
Speaker 1: you about before we went on air who's like a
Speaker 1: teen nerd. He's like really hardcore about his tea, and
Speaker 1: he would argue that's not true, like it has to
Speaker 1: come from the specific plant. It's only tea that like
Speaker 1: stuff like you know how you go to like the
Speaker 1: grocery store and they have like Breathe Deep tea or
Speaker 1: stress relief tea or whatever. Well, that doesn't have the
Speaker 1: specific plant in it. It's just a different you know,
Speaker 1: mallegation of herbs. Right, And he's like, that's not tea,
Speaker 1: Like he's very strict about that. But you're right. In
Speaker 1: other cultures people, you know, tea has a lot of
Speaker 1: different meanings. Well, well, let's get into it. What is
Speaker 1: green tea. Let's let's define the potential monkey summoning substance here. Okay,
Speaker 1: so all green tea is the unfermented product of the
Speaker 1: Chamelia synensious plant. Might be saying that wrong again, my
Speaker 1: latin not the best. But green tea and black tea
Speaker 1: are technically made from the same plant, but in a
Speaker 1: less processed green form. There's a higher level of the
Speaker 1: original substances that are in that plant, which is why
Speaker 1: we have these arguments about well, green teas is really
Speaker 1: good for you because it has X, Y, and Z
Speaker 1: and what will dive deeper down those chemical roots? Uh?
Speaker 1: No pun intendant uh later in the episode. But yeah,
Speaker 1: essentially it's just it comes from this one plant, uh,
Speaker 1: and then it's you know, developed in various ways, Like
Speaker 1: I said, black tea's dryer, green tea's weather, or at
Speaker 1: least it was in the Victorian or Yeah, it's It's
Speaker 1: worth pointing out too that that black tea is actually
Speaker 1: red tea in several Asian languages, including Mandarin Chinese. So
Speaker 1: in Mandarin, green tea is lucha and red tea is
Speaker 1: hong sha, So essentially that's red tea, and it does
Speaker 1: have a reddish appearance to Yeah, definitely, I wonder where
Speaker 1: the black came from other than just like the difference
Speaker 1: between the actual loose dried tea or it may I
Speaker 1: guess have to do with just the like the the
Speaker 1: fact that many Asian teas, like we're discussing, they seem
Speaker 1: to be a weaker concoction. Yeah, and the you know,
Speaker 1: the Western is gonna hold of it. They want a stronger,
Speaker 1: blacker concoction. Yea. Even then it's like, do you ever
Speaker 1: have teeth? It's just really black. No, especially when you
Speaker 1: think about coffee in relation. But like like I was
Speaker 1: saying before we went on air, I drink my tea
Speaker 1: really really better, and I leave like a bag in
Speaker 1: basically until I've done drink either drinking from the cup
Speaker 1: or from the cattle. I just I don't mind it.
Speaker 1: But like you said, like you know, sometimes I'll go
Speaker 1: to a Chinese restaurant here in the United States and
Speaker 1: they'll serve tea and it's it's fine, but it's like
Speaker 1: incredibly weak compared to what I normally drink at home. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, China is is the sort of the birthplace
Speaker 1: of tea culture. It is. It has a rich history
Speaker 1: of of of tea cultivation and use recreationally, socially, religiously.
Speaker 1: In Chinese mythology, tea is a is sometimes attributed to
Speaker 1: the second mythical emperor of the twenty eighth century b c.
Speaker 1: E Uh. This is shinnng She who actually came up
Speaker 1: in our cannabis episode, remember him. So this is the
Speaker 1: guy tea and weed. Yeah, well see, this is the
Speaker 1: divine farmer, founder of Chinese herbal medicine. And if you
Speaker 1: remember from that past episode, he either he either tasted
Speaker 1: hundreds of herbs or thrashed them with his magical whip
Speaker 1: in order to learn their property. And according to one legend,
Speaker 1: he consumes seventy poisons in a single day in order
Speaker 1: to bring herbal medicine into the world. Now, as far
Speaker 1: as Key goes, the story is that he he sat
Speaker 1: beneath a camellia tree and he boiled water for drinking again,
Speaker 1: drinking hot water as as long going to practice in
Speaker 1: China for for a number of reasons. But the short
Speaker 1: answer is that it's supposed to be good for your health.
Speaker 1: But then dried leaves fell from the tree into his
Speaker 1: mug or bowl of water, so he smelled it smelled good,
Speaker 1: and presumably he'd had sixty nine or fewer poisons that day,
Speaker 1: so he said, what heck, I'll give it a taste
Speaker 1: to what this is like. Uh. He he liked it,
Speaker 1: and the rest is history. There's also a story from
Speaker 1: Chinese Buddhism in which boded Harma, the fifth or sixth
Speaker 1: century Chinese patriarch of China Buddhism. He is supposedly the
Speaker 1: source of the first tea leaves. So, according to the
Speaker 1: practice of Chinese Buddhism by Holmes Welch quote, the first
Speaker 1: tea plans said to have grown from voted harms eyelashes,
Speaker 1: which he cut off to keep himself awake during meditation. Interesting,
Speaker 1: now I want to have some eyelash tea I wonder
Speaker 1: if you can get that at Whole Foods. It's very
Speaker 1: pricey to have a Buddhist patriarch. Actually, well, by the
Speaker 1: time it was first introduced in England in the mid
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds, it was mostly green, like what I was saying,
Speaker 1: and it remained really popular because both doctors and the
Speaker 1: Temperance movement were recommending it, because they're saying, hey, this
Speaker 1: is an alternative to stuff like beer, you should drink
Speaker 1: green tea instead. Uh. And that's where you know it
Speaker 1: had the surge and popularity at first. But then, like
Speaker 1: I said, because of these sort of machination is behind
Speaker 1: the distribution of green tea. Then the rise of black
Speaker 1: tea came along, and I think that's why today you
Speaker 1: see more black tea. When you think of black, I
Speaker 1: mean black tea is essentially British at this point English
Speaker 1: inevitably a foreign important English breakfast. I meant to say, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's certainly that's when I think of black tea. That's
Speaker 1: that and Earl Gray are the first thing that popped
Speaker 1: into my head. All right, Well, on that note, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break. We're gonna steep some more tea,
Speaker 1: maybe you will as well. And when we come back,
Speaker 1: we are going to get into this hallucination issue. Can
Speaker 1: green tea really summon the monkey spirit? Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1: So the reason why this hallucination rumor got started in
Speaker 1: the first place and why left anew latched onto it
Speaker 1: was there was an actual medical journal article published in
Speaker 1: eight thirty nine in the British medical journal The Lancet,
Speaker 1: which is pretty well known even today. Uh. And it
Speaker 1: was by a guy named George Sigmund, and it was
Speaker 1: on the positive and negative effects of tea. And he
Speaker 1: wrote that while green tea did have medicinal properties, it
Speaker 1: could cause stomach problems and a quote fluttering in the chest. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he cited a paper that he had read in
Speaker 1: Glasgow Medical Journal of a woman who experienced excruciating stomach
Speaker 1: pain and symptoms of hysteria where she was shrieking and
Speaker 1: she was perspiring from her forehead. I like that, that's
Speaker 1: one of the symptoms. Um. And they attributed it to
Speaker 1: her drinking green tea on an empty stomach. And they said, oh,
Speaker 1: you had an empty stomach and you didn't dilute your
Speaker 1: green tea with milk, cream or sugar. Uh. So the
Speaker 1: way they calmed her down was by giving her and
Speaker 1: this is a direct quote, six grains of solid opium
Speaker 1: and four drachmas of texture that the green tea was
Speaker 1: way too much for your Here have some opium that
Speaker 1: you know. This is something that came to mind and
Speaker 1: in reading the story, because if you want to think
Speaker 1: about Asian imports to Britain that can give you an
Speaker 1: altered state of mind. I mean, there's opium right there.
Speaker 1: You don't even need a mess with the green Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well and certainly I mean there was uh, you know
Speaker 1: opium distribution in England at the time as well too.
Speaker 1: So yeah, again another like thing that was just kind
Speaker 1: of ignored by left Anue in this story. Uh. But
Speaker 1: the real problem, like I said, was the tea people
Speaker 1: were basically distributing adulterated t right, So uh, you have
Speaker 1: this situation, like I said, iron findings, there were also
Speaker 1: plants like Hawthorne, and then the other thing that was
Speaker 1: making them adulterated was the die that they would add
Speaker 1: to them. So you had vertegras, Prussian blue, Dutch pink,
Speaker 1: Ferris sulfate, copper carbonate, and then my favorite die to
Speaker 1: use on T sheep dung. Apparently the sheep dung was
Speaker 1: the one that was the least harmful to the people
Speaker 1: drinking it. It was so common, and this is what
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier. It was so common these distributors when
Speaker 1: they tried to actually put out the real thing, people
Speaker 1: would say, Nope, that's the wrong color. Please add some
Speaker 1: sheep dung. Wow. If only they thought to promote what
Speaker 1: is it? Is it? Ga macha? Where have you have
Speaker 1: the toasted rice and the green tea tea? I don't know,
Speaker 1: so wonderful tasting teeth. Yeah, I've just been promoting that
Speaker 1: no sheep dung required. Well, yeah, I don't know. There
Speaker 1: was all kinds of stuff going on with I mean,
Speaker 1: this isn't just tea, Like we're highlighting tea in this episode,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot like weird industrial food practices that
Speaker 1: just weren't good for people that unlike today where food
Speaker 1: is perfect. Actually we're gonna come full circle back around
Speaker 1: to this again by the end of the episode. Um,
Speaker 1: so okay, So this this causes the reputation of green
Speaker 1: tea to grow worse. Green Tea the horror story doesn't
Speaker 1: help green tea, all right, Yeah, it's got caffeine in it.
Speaker 1: It's a stimulant. It affects our entire central nervous system,
Speaker 1: and that probably helps us with alertness, right, But there
Speaker 1: is evidence that in some extreme cases, caffeine can cause
Speaker 1: nervous twitching, hallucinations, and anxiety. An excessive caffeine can cause tremors, dizziness, confusion, insomnia, restlessness, agitation,
Speaker 1: and an irregular heartbeat. But let's be clear here. For
Speaker 1: Green Tea to do stuff like this to you, especially hallucinations,
Speaker 1: you have to drink a lot of it, right, and
Speaker 1: you have to be the kind of person who is
Speaker 1: is more likely to experience hallucination. I mean, hallucinations can
Speaker 1: occur for a variety of reasons, uh not, all of
Speaker 1: which involve illicit substances. And some people are just more
Speaker 1: prone to experiencing hallucinations than others. I have found that
Speaker 1: I'm I, I seem to be particularly adverse to experiencing
Speaker 1: visual hallucinations. And I've never experienced a visual hallucination in
Speaker 1: my life. I don't think I have either other than well,
Speaker 1: you know, I was blind that time. The story I
Speaker 1: told him the exorcism episode last Actually, I guess it
Speaker 1: would be a couple of days ago for you guys listening. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Other than that, I think the sky turned the night
Speaker 1: sky the black turned red for me once, but that
Speaker 1: was that's the extent. No crazy goblin monkey spirits anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of want a monkey spirit. But uh So.
Speaker 1: There was a Live Science article actually that came out
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine that I referenced for this to
Speaker 1: just really like nail down what's going on with caffeine specifically,
Speaker 1: which seems to be the only way you can hallucinate
Speaker 1: off of green tea. Uh if. The article there they
Speaker 1: they did a number of tests on people drinking various
Speaker 1: uh doses of caffeine and how much it would take
Speaker 1: for them to hallucinate. It was people who drank the
Speaker 1: equivalent of three cups of browed coffee a day are
Speaker 1: the ones who are more likely to hallucinate, And that
Speaker 1: translates into, uh, I believe nine cups of green tea,
Speaker 1: So I mean I could see it. I probably don't
Speaker 1: break three in a day, so I regularly break three, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, A lot of it comes down to
Speaker 1: this susceptibility. Yeah, I can't vi is it tea or
Speaker 1: coffee for you? Because you drink coffee, right, Generally it's coffee, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and often pretty strong coffee. So maybe maybe that's
Speaker 1: where the red sky came from. Do you have too
Speaker 1: much coffee? Well, that's one interpretation. Um. This also makes
Speaker 1: me think back to the Futurama episode where Fry drinks
Speaker 1: all the cup of coffee I don't know one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he has something like he gets the unlimited cups of
Speaker 1: coffee for the day or a certain amount, and he
Speaker 1: spends he spends his his tax refund or on coffee,
Speaker 1: and he drinks all these cups of coffee, and it's
Speaker 1: a ticker at the bottom, and he reaches the point
Speaker 1: where you drinks so much coffee that time stands still,
Speaker 1: and he's able to save the day and Russian and
Speaker 1: get everyone out of a burning build. You know, that
Speaker 1: may explain a lot to me about one of our colleagues,
Speaker 1: Holly Fry, who is a big fan of future rama
Speaker 1: uh and drinks more coffee than I know anybody else
Speaker 1: at this in this office. But she drinks a lot
Speaker 1: of coffee. Yeah, maybe maybe she's just trying to make
Speaker 1: time stands still. Hey, aren't we all it's true? Uh?
Speaker 1: So back to the study the researchers found that people
Speaker 1: with a CAFFEINEI in take that was as high as
Speaker 1: nine cups of green tea or three cups of brood
Speaker 1: coffee a day, whether it came from coffee, tea, chocolate,
Speaker 1: or whatever energy drinks or pills, they had a three
Speaker 1: times higher tendency to hear voices and see things that
Speaker 1: were not there than those who consumed the equivalent of
Speaker 1: this much coffee. Right, So this goes back to your point,
Speaker 1: which is that there are some people who are just
Speaker 1: more susceptible to hallucinations or visions or hearing things than others. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so subsequently they found that those people within their
Speaker 1: study were the ones who are really susceptible to getting
Speaker 1: hit by this caffeine. The other explanation that's connected to
Speaker 1: this seems to be tied to caffeine increasing stress, which
Speaker 1: causes our bodies to release more cortisol. And and so
Speaker 1: the explanation was that people who drink that much caffeine
Speaker 1: are more prone to mental health associations because of this
Speaker 1: amount of cortisol in their systems. They're stressed out to
Speaker 1: begin with. Yeah, I mean when you start trying to
Speaker 1: tease apart the way we perceive the world, which you know,
Speaker 1: you can sort of get into the argument that that
Speaker 1: all perception is essentially hallucination, and what we call an
Speaker 1: hallucination is just an abnormal version or reskewed version of that.
Speaker 1: You know, there's so many factors that determine that. So
Speaker 1: you could have coffee having a direct role or an
Speaker 1: indirect role on that manifestation. Maybe we need to do
Speaker 1: like that's maybe that's our next Facebook Live is just you,
Speaker 1: me and Joe drinking caffeine until one of us hallucination.
Speaker 1: The viewers bet on exactly, So I see, you've got
Speaker 1: something interesting here connected to the Church of Latter day Saints,
Speaker 1: which we seem to be uncovering a lot of really
Speaker 1: fascinating facts to them. Yeah, this is if you ever
Speaker 1: rich uh you know, not a deep history, but you
Speaker 1: still have reached a rich history there. And this is
Speaker 1: something that I found when I looked in Oliver sacks
Speaker 1: excellent book Hallucinations, which is always one of my go
Speaker 1: toos anytime we we cover a topic that gets into
Speaker 1: into hallucination. Now Sacks just passed away this year, right, Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he recently did recently pass pass away. In this book,
Speaker 1: he does not really discuss tea much at all, So
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to pull out any wonderful nuggets of
Speaker 1: caffeine and related hallucination. But I did find out a
Speaker 1: wonderful t anecdote. Uh. He points out that obviously, members
Speaker 1: of the Church of Latter day Saints substain from tea
Speaker 1: and coffee. However, on the long march from the Mormon
Speaker 1: Trail to Utah, the pioneers who had eventually found Salt
Speaker 1: Lake City, happened upon a roadside herb which they brewed
Speaker 1: into what is called has been called Mormon tea. Now,
Speaker 1: the herb was actually nothing none other than if fed,
Speaker 1: which contains ephedrin, which is chemically akin to amphetamines, and
Speaker 1: hallucinations are sometimes an adverse side effect to ephedra. So
Speaker 1: that's uh, how possible hallucination scenario they're from drinking tea.
Speaker 1: And again, to come back to what we're talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: anything essentially, unless you want to get really specific with
Speaker 1: your with your with your definition of tea, any hot
Speaker 1: water herbal concoction is a T. So there's cocoa tea,
Speaker 1: there's there's opium T. You can you can brew a
Speaker 1: tea with various psychedelic substances such as uh, mushrooms with psilocybin. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: These are all ways to get a t that uh
Speaker 1: more or less is guaranteed to give you a an
Speaker 1: altered state of consciousness, if not possible hallucinations. Another Facebook
Speaker 1: live episode of us doing an ayahuasca ritual. We can
Speaker 1: have the three cups. It would be like a ball
Speaker 1: cup game, except the set of a ball under the
Speaker 1: cup one of them is. I think we would quickly
Speaker 1: figure out who got which one. But so you know,
Speaker 1: let's review here for a second before I move on.
Speaker 1: It seems like the verdict. Can green tea make you hallucinate?
Speaker 1: Probably not. I mean, yes, there's enough caffeine in it
Speaker 1: that if you drank a lot of it, it's possible.
Speaker 1: But let's look back on the green tea story. The
Speaker 1: idea there was that this guy was continually drinking green
Speaker 1: tea over the course of his life. He was drinking
Speaker 1: it every night before bed, and that that built up somehow,
Speaker 1: I guess, in his blood stream, and that was what
Speaker 1: was causing him to see the evil monkey. Uh, it
Speaker 1: doesn't work like that, you know, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: one one dose situation. I think in terms of that,
Speaker 1: like you have to at the time be drinking at
Speaker 1: least nine cups. Yeah, green tea is not They're not
Speaker 1: deposits of green tea and a lifelong tea drinker's body
Speaker 1: that are building up. Uh. You know, you kind of
Speaker 1: get into this similar area where you have the idea
Speaker 1: that that the drug use alcohol and drugs that they're
Speaker 1: stored and you're fat and the only way to free
Speaker 1: yourself from those is to to sign up for some
Speaker 1: sort of like a sauna based program where you're gonna
Speaker 1: sweat all that out of your your fat cells. It's like,
Speaker 1: um reminding me of like sci fi scenarios to where
Speaker 1: people take stuff and then it like their bodies like
Speaker 1: an incubator for it, and then like they turn into
Speaker 1: basically like a harvesting system for where people just shoved uh,
Speaker 1: syringes in them and draw out, you know, green tea
Speaker 1: out of their blood. All right, Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take another quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will explore the the the actual health benefits of
Speaker 1: green tea and what some of the science says about it.
Speaker 1: So if you're green tea drinker, especially, you're probably aware
Speaker 1: of the commercial nature of it being healthy, at least
Speaker 1: here in the United States. UM, it's heavily advertised as
Speaker 1: being you know, great for you for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go over this, Like I said, there's just
Speaker 1: a ton of literature out there, but we're gonna go
Speaker 1: over it kind of review what it does and what
Speaker 1: it doesn't, at least in terms of direct evidence. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, it is full of antioxidants, and as
Speaker 1: such it's linked to health benefits like a lower risk
Speaker 1: of stroke and some types of cancer. Uh. It's also
Speaker 1: become very popular because people drink it wishing to prevent
Speaker 1: cancer and health heart disease. But there are studies that
Speaker 1: argue back and forth about these properties, and the experts
Speaker 1: say there really isn't direct evidence yet to confirm anything
Speaker 1: like a UM. And in fact, there is an interesting
Speaker 1: uh right up about the health effects of green tea
Speaker 1: in the Salem Press Encyclopedia. And the guy who wrote
Speaker 1: that basically said, look, I only trust it if it's
Speaker 1: a double blind, placebo controlled study. Uh. And you have
Speaker 1: to do that. And he said the one that he
Speaker 1: looked at that did prove something, although he wanted more evidence,
Speaker 1: was that green team makes short term improvements in your
Speaker 1: cholesterol profile, but those benefits disappear after four weeks. Now,
Speaker 1: what wasn't clear to me was like, is it like,
Speaker 1: you drink green tea one day, it helps you, and
Speaker 1: then if you stop drinking green tea four weeks later,
Speaker 1: those benefits go away. Or is it like, if you're
Speaker 1: a continuous green tea drinker, you get a one time,
Speaker 1: four week decrease in cholesterol and then it's just back.
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I couldn't discern that from what he was saying.
Speaker 1: But one way or the other, this was like the
Speaker 1: one study. He was like, this one's for real, guys.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of the health marketing around green
Speaker 1: tea and just sort of like the the general idea
Speaker 1: that green tea has healthy qualities that kind of floats
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere around you. I have found myself being
Speaker 1: influenced by that at times where I'll be in the
Speaker 1: office and I think I should I'll be at home
Speaker 1: I have green tea or should I have coffee? And
Speaker 1: the little the voice of the I guess the monkey
Speaker 1: will whisper in my ear and say, green days a
Speaker 1: little healthier. Maybe not much, but maybe just a little.
Speaker 1: Who knows. But you like green tea, so why don't
Speaker 1: you just go ahead and drink it and you'll feel
Speaker 1: like a little bit healthier. Yeah, yeah, man, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna stop thinking about that monkey for a while now.
Speaker 1: If you follow us on social media, I posted an
Speaker 1: original illustration somebody did of the monkey splashing around inside
Speaker 1: a cup of green tea, and I asked people to
Speaker 1: guess what we were doing the episode on and the
Speaker 1: responses were hilarious. Uh, but yeah, monkey is going to
Speaker 1: be our new mascot maybe. By the way, I also
Speaker 1: asked the monkey. I said, if I drink the green
Speaker 1: tea instead of the coffee, does that mean my teeth
Speaker 1: won't become staying And the monkey said, no, there's still
Speaker 1: dan it's in the car tea. Your teeth will still
Speaker 1: get stained even though it's green and light. At least
Speaker 1: he's uh, he's honest. Yeah, he's very truthful about it. Now,
Speaker 1: we would have to ask the monkey about these cancer predictions,
Speaker 1: because regarding cancer, it seems that green tea shows promise
Speaker 1: for treating things like cervical display asia and reducing the
Speaker 1: risk of prostate cancer. But again there's conflicting evidence about
Speaker 1: whether it has any effect on stomach cancer for instance. Likewise,
Speaker 1: researchers haven't found reliable evidence that it reduces breast cancer,
Speaker 1: although there's some quote weak evidence that it decreases recurrence
Speaker 1: of breast cancer, so maybe not preventing. But if you've
Speaker 1: had breast cancer, you have to drink apparently at least
Speaker 1: three or more cups a day in order to for
Speaker 1: the recurrence to be staved off. Now, there's some other
Speaker 1: disease treatments, and honestly, there were so many we might
Speaker 1: miss some here, so please let it let us know
Speaker 1: if there's something you know that we don't. But one
Speaker 1: study looked, for instance, at how effective gargling green tea
Speaker 1: is at preventing influenza UH. It showed that those who
Speaker 1: did this were less likely developed influenza and less likely
Speaker 1: to find friends to go have two with. UH. There's
Speaker 1: also some preliminary evidence that it might help prevent colds
Speaker 1: and the flu okay, UH weak evidence that chewing green
Speaker 1: tea candy can reduce gum inflammation if you have ginger
Speaker 1: vitis It's also been proposed as a means of preventing
Speaker 1: liver disease, but the evidence isn't all that convincing. They're
Speaker 1: now remember, like I said, it's got caffeine in it,
Speaker 1: so of course it does affect our entire central nervous system.
Speaker 1: This produces alertness. There's also a couple other substances that
Speaker 1: are important to note here that are in green tea.
Speaker 1: Theo bromine, which is a smooth muscle relaxant, and there's
Speaker 1: also theophyline, which is a smooth muscle relaxant that specifically
Speaker 1: can cause restricted air passages to open. So it's been
Speaker 1: used to treat asthma and it makes breathing easier. So
Speaker 1: again I have asthma, and I was like, hey, maybe
Speaker 1: again another check in the column for Okay, I'll drink
Speaker 1: more green now. Um so yeah. Another study on green
Speaker 1: tea is that the polyphanols within it may help prevent
Speaker 1: skin cancer if they're applied directly to the skin. So
Speaker 1: I think, like you make like a polstice or something
Speaker 1: that you put on your skin. This may help protect
Speaker 1: the skin from sun damage, but not by physically blocking
Speaker 1: ultraviolet light by protect but instead it protects your cells
Speaker 1: from it. So it's it's not keeping the light from
Speaker 1: hitting your skin, it's doing something to your cells that
Speaker 1: prevent them from being damaged by the light. Well, there
Speaker 1: seemed to be no shortage of of green tea and
Speaker 1: few skin products. Oh yeah, I mean that's the thing is,
Speaker 1: there's green tea and a lot of stuff right now.
Speaker 1: I think I have shampoo with green tea in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. I'm pretty sure I've seen that as well.
Speaker 1: Now I've there have also been studies that have found
Speaker 1: associations between consuming green tea and reduced risk for several
Speaker 1: different cancers. We've mentioned skin already, breast, long colon esophagal bladder. Uh,
Speaker 1: there have been a lot of studies, and you know,
Speaker 1: there seems to be in asociation there. Again, nobody's arguing
Speaker 1: there is a magical property and green tea that is
Speaker 1: just wiping out cancer cells left and right. But there
Speaker 1: is this one amino acid in it called l theonine
Speaker 1: that seems to be pretty powerful. Uh. And I I
Speaker 1: went through an academic paper specifically on this it's properties
Speaker 1: and green tea and what it's potentially doing in the brain.
Speaker 1: So we'll cover this as well, this one is a
Speaker 1: big nine comes up a lot with supplements. You can
Speaker 1: go and get plenty of just either straight up or
Speaker 1: alfonine and infuse supplements. Well, what's interesting about it is,
Speaker 1: you know those other studies focused mainly on physical disease,
Speaker 1: right cancer and UH disease treatments like influenza, but uh,
Speaker 1: this amino acid relieves anxiety and calms us. But then
Speaker 1: it also improves our alertness, So on top of the caffeine,
Speaker 1: you're getting some alertness from this as well. It closely
Speaker 1: res mbles the chemical glutamate, which signals excitation in our
Speaker 1: brains as a neurotransmitter, so l phonine does the opposite
Speaker 1: as of glutamate. It binds in the same receptors in
Speaker 1: our brain as glutamate and therefore it blocks them from
Speaker 1: receiving its effects. This inhibition is assisted by it also
Speaker 1: stimulating the production of the neurotransmitter GABBA G A B A,
Speaker 1: which also has common effects. So between those two or
Speaker 1: three you know side effects. Apparently green tea calms you down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean those I feel like you have three or
Speaker 1: four different supplement bottles. They're all present in readily available
Speaker 1: and cheaper green tea. Uh. You know. The benefit here
Speaker 1: is that unlike taking in anti anxiety drugs, green tea
Speaker 1: and the l phonine within it produces the alertness instead
Speaker 1: of sleepiness, so it doesn't impair your motor behavior. For instance.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, if you're driving and you're stressed out,
Speaker 1: but you don't want to fall asleep, drink some green tea. Additionally,
Speaker 1: it seems to prevent the abrupt rise in blood pressure
Speaker 1: that's associated with stress. And this is good because it
Speaker 1: prevents arterial damage from the surging blood pressure in your body.
Speaker 1: And that's not something I like to think about that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. For some reason that that squixx me
Speaker 1: out the idea of just like my blood pressure like
Speaker 1: pushing so hard that it's like ripping my vessels apart.
Speaker 1: That's what that would that would That's that's a horrifying image.
Speaker 1: It seems unpleasant. There is also some evidence that it
Speaker 1: influences how genes are expressed, specifically in the amygdala and
Speaker 1: the hippocampus, and these, remember are the parts of the brain.
Speaker 1: They're associated with fear aggression in memory, So it could
Speaker 1: be used to treat stress, but also PTSD. There's some
Speaker 1: people looking into green tea and how it might help
Speaker 1: with that. This again we keep coming back to. This
Speaker 1: reminds me of m D m A and the theory
Speaker 1: surrounding that treating PTSD. So it's currently the subject of
Speaker 1: human studies also with patients who have schizophrenia, so there's
Speaker 1: some idea that it might be able to help them
Speaker 1: as well. And get this, we know stress effects cognition,
Speaker 1: but not only does l phonine reverse that kind of
Speaker 1: impairment due to its relationship with glutamate, but it may
Speaker 1: also be able to prevent damage to brain cells that
Speaker 1: is induced from exposure to toxic levels of aluminum. So
Speaker 1: like if you're breathing in an aluminum and it's like
Speaker 1: potentially causing brain damage if you theoretically if you drink
Speaker 1: green tea, it can prevent that damage from occurring. Uh.
Speaker 1: It can also reduce the impact of having a stroke.
Speaker 1: A stroke is where there's blockage of blood to our brain.
Speaker 1: This results in the death of our brain cells. But
Speaker 1: l phonine signals our endo field cells to constrict or
Speaker 1: relax appropriately as our blood is flowing. So go back
Speaker 1: to my my horrific imagery earlier. Your blood vessels are
Speaker 1: basically accommodating for the rush of blood no matter what
Speaker 1: it's I guess velocity. The velocity of blood is uh.
Speaker 1: And specifically in animal studies, if you administer l PHI
Speaker 1: and I up to twelve hours after an animal has
Speaker 1: a stroke, it can protect their brain cells and reduce
Speaker 1: the size of their damaged brain areas. So it seems
Speaker 1: like it's pretty potent stuff. There's definitely something going on
Speaker 1: here with green tea. Ah, it's okay, So we've we've
Speaker 1: determined it's probably not gonna make you hallucinate unless you
Speaker 1: binge drink it. And even then maybe UH and I
Speaker 1: do not attempt to hallucinate just by bench drinking green tea.
Speaker 1: We're not advocating if you're gonna get sick of green
Speaker 1: tea before you see anything funny. Um. But then, like,
Speaker 1: even though science hasn't really nailed down the research on this,
Speaker 1: there seems to be a lot of good qualities to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And like I said, you can pretty much look for
Speaker 1: a green tea study about anything and you may very
Speaker 1: well find it. For instance, I was looking around, there's
Speaker 1: there's a study out there about the effect of green
Speaker 1: tea on supplement absorption. Uh, there's a there's a particular
Speaker 1: study two thousand fifteen looks at green tea is a
Speaker 1: way to improve in our eyes. They received. Researchers in
Speaker 1: this case successful use compounds from green tea to help uh,
Speaker 1: image cancer tumors in mice. Also, I've seen it can
Speaker 1: help fight glucoma. Really that the studies are all over
Speaker 1: the place. We could do an entire podcast just on
Speaker 1: you know, episode after episode of Green Teeth, every Green
Speaker 1: Tea research that has come out. Yeah, but we're not
Speaker 1: actually going to do that. Yeah, that's a that's another
Speaker 1: show for another network. Um, all right, let's close out. Then.
Speaker 1: Does it have health benefits? Seems so yeah. Will it
Speaker 1: cause hallucination of evil monkey spirits? Doubtful? Probably not. But
Speaker 1: let's remember that this is being pushed pretty hard commercially
Speaker 1: right now, so much so that manufacturers are currently offering
Speaker 1: the extracts and pillform right. We see these in like
Speaker 1: a supplement stores and stuff like that. You could probably
Speaker 1: even get them at the grocery store at this point.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you can buy this stuff in Amazon, but
Speaker 1: you should know and and this is where it circles
Speaker 1: back again to those guys in the Victorian area throwing
Speaker 1: iron filings and Prussian blue into their and cheap dounge
Speaker 1: into their green tea. In a two thousand and six
Speaker 1: analysis that tested green tea extract products, they found that
Speaker 1: some of them were contaminated with lead. Uh and this
Speaker 1: or something else about these specific extracts is potentially leading
Speaker 1: to liver inflammation. So again, like everything in moderation, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it comes back to a theme that's it's come
Speaker 1: up a lot recently. It came up on the second
Speaker 1: Dangerous Food episode that Joe and I did, is that
Speaker 1: green tea is a food product. You know where your
Speaker 1: food products came from. The more the more access, the
Speaker 1: more unrecognizable that food product is, the more I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it's definitely bad, but the more questions there are
Speaker 1: to potentially answer there. This is true. Every time I
Speaker 1: eat a vegetarian meat loaf, I wonder what's actually in
Speaker 1: this the meat of a vegetarian of course, if that's
Speaker 1: another hard story, and you know this is something I'm
Speaker 1: meant to bring up earlier. I feel like the green
Speaker 1: tea short story that we started with the way that
Speaker 1: it was inspired by this article in the Lancet. It
Speaker 1: makes me think that had this been the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: sixties or fifties, the Green Tea would have definitely been
Speaker 1: a B movie or an exploitation, because that's where you
Speaker 1: you often see these ideas and these new new studies
Speaker 1: sometimes at least very weakly resonate for the first time, uh,
Speaker 1: the first place that the sort of the media you know,
Speaker 1: collective consciousness actually thinks about it for us. Second, I
Speaker 1: for one, would really like to see like an exploitative
Speaker 1: green tea horror movie. But despite that, let's let's learn
Speaker 1: from my mistake, uh, and and know that you can
Speaker 1: drink this stuff and it's gonna be okay, Like you're
Speaker 1: not gonna start seeing evil monkeys anytime soon. Although uh please,
Speaker 1: if anybody out there wants to send us our new
Speaker 1: avatar of the Green Tea evil monkey, we we won't
Speaker 1: discourage that. I would also love left to know does
Speaker 1: anyone out there drink their green tea recordly out of
Speaker 1: a hideous monkey mug? That would that would be perfect,
Speaker 1: very nice. I kind of want one myself, all right,
Speaker 1: So tell us about your monkey mugs or send us
Speaker 1: your monkey images. Uh you canna get in touch with
Speaker 1: us on all of our social platforms. We're on Facebook,
Speaker 1: we're on Twitter, we're on tumbler, and we are on Instagram. Uh,
Speaker 1: you can find all of those on stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That is the mothership. That's where
Speaker 1: we've got every episode of the podcast, every video that
Speaker 1: we've ever done, and all of the various blog posts
Speaker 1: that we have done as well that are connected to
Speaker 1: the podcasts and other interests of ours. That's right, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a new year. This is the first episode
Speaker 1: of the New Year that we are recording. Do you
Speaker 1: have any New Year's resolutions? Do you engage in that
Speaker 1: sort of thing? I don't, but I gotta say, after
Speaker 1: doing all the research on this, I will be drinking
Speaker 1: more green tea. I feel like I probably will as well,
Speaker 1: So I'll add that to my my other actual resolution,
Speaker 1: which is too blind the mechanical eye of every automatic
Speaker 1: toilet I encounter the entire year. Yeah, how are you
Speaker 1: going to do that? You have like a like a
Speaker 1: sewing needle. No, I mean it would be tempting to
Speaker 1: go complete, you know, Odysseus on it and stab it
Speaker 1: and stab the cyclopean eye out. I think I'm gonna
Speaker 1: just gonna put stickers and duct tape over them, because
Speaker 1: I think as responsible humans, we have the power. We
Speaker 1: have the right to flush the toilet when and where
Speaker 1: we want, when when we want to flush it, to
Speaker 1: to judge the contents of the toilet, and and actually
Speaker 1: push a button, not have the toilet go off at
Speaker 1: odd times while we are potentially setting upon it. You're
Speaker 1: referring specifically to our bathrooms here at work because they
Speaker 1: are sensitive. They are sensitive to the point where it's
Speaker 1: getting to where I cannot I cannot sit on a
Speaker 1: toilet anywhere, and the smallest noise in the background will
Speaker 1: make me think, oh goodness, is toilets about the plush?
Speaker 1: I better hop up out of the sea because when
Speaker 1: it flushes here too, the toilet splashed the ceiling. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: You're You're in for a hurricane of toilet water. It's
Speaker 1: mechanical tyranny, and I'm not gonna take it anymore. Well,
Speaker 1: let us know. There's one other way to let us
Speaker 1: know if you want to support Robert in his fight
Speaker 1: against the toilets, and that's by writing us at Blow
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, is that how
Speaker 1: stuff works. Dot com b