From cook@cco.caltech.edu Sun May 16 13:58:09 1993
To: adam@vlsi.cs.caltech.edu
Subject: Caffeine++!


>Newsgroups: alt.drugs.caffeine
>Path: nntp-server.caltech.edu!news.claremont.edu!uunet!caen!batcomputer!ghost.dsi.unimi.it!crs4.it!malena.crs4.it!omar
>From: omar@malena.crs4.it (Omar G. Stradella)
>Subject: The plant with highest content of caffeine ?
>Sender: news@crs4.it (USENET News System)
>Message-ID: <1993May13.150253.21804@crs4.it>
>Date: Thu, 13 May 1993 15:02:53 GMT
>Organization: CRS4, Center for Adv.Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia
>Lines: 51

I don't know if anybody posted this info before (it's a little old) but
here it goes anyway. It's from Science News, Vol. 141, p. 28, January 11, 1992.



"And you thought YOU hated mornings"

Many people start each day with a steaming mug of coffee to
sweep away the last cobwebs of sleep. But coffee just doesn't
pack a big enough punch for the male members of a remote
Amazonian tribe called the Achuar Jivaro, report two eth-
nobotanists from Washington University, in St. Louis.

Walter U. Lewis and Memory Elvin-Lewis found that Achuar
Jivaro tribesmen - who live in the Amazonian regions of Peru
and Ecuador - each morning quaff an herbal tea that contains
the caffeine equivalent of five cups of coffee. But even more
interestingly, the two researchers discovered that the men
routinely vomit up most of the tea in order to avoid caffeine-
overdose symptoms such as headache, profuse sweating and a
bad case of the jitters.

The daily, vomiting, or emesis, "is simply part of [an Achuar
Jivaro] macho ritual, passed down through the ages," says
Lewis- "The tea is so pleasing that they overindulge, vomit to
rid themselves of the excess caffeine, then go about their
business," he says.

The Achuar Jivaro make their jolting beverage from the
leaves of a South American holly, "Ilex guayusa" which contains
the highest percentage of caffeine by dry weight of any plant in
the world, Lewis says.

Through biochemical studies, the Washington University
team determined that the holly does not contain any naturally
occurring emetic, which would have explained the tribesmen's
vomiting.
 

-- 
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