Coffee Causing Hallucinations? [02-03-2012]
A new research conducted by a team of nutritionists discovered that too much coffee consumption can cause hallucinations. Things have changed these days. Coffee drinkers are not just adults. With the demographics of coffee consumers changing over the years, the concern is that young teenagers may be affected by the high caffeine content. According to Professor Simon Crowe from La Trobe University in Australia, consuming five cups of coffee a day could contribute to hallucinatory experiences.

Just exactly what does hallucination mean? The word comes from Latin and it means to wander mentally. Hallucinations are a false perception where an individual feels of believes in something that doesn’t exist in reality. Thus, hallucinatory experiences may involve individuals hearing, seeing or smelling things that are not there. Professor Crowe and his colleagues measured the effect of caffeine and stress with 92 non-clinical participants.
The participants were designated to high and low stress accompanied by high caffeine and low caffeine conditions. Afterwards the participants were exposed to white noise, which is created by combining sounds of all different frequencies together.

Interestingly, participants who were exposed to high levels of stress and consumed significantly high levels of caffeine reported that they heard Christmas songs. Of course, such music was never played. In conclusion, Crowe believed that the combination of caffeine and high levels of stress affect the likelihood of an individual experiencing a psychosis-like symptom. Well, this is only one report. Therefore, it would be far off to say that caffeine and hallucinations are directly related. Then again it wouldn’t hurt to know that caffeine consumption in some moderation can be intoxicating, contributing to nervousness, irritability, anxiety and insomnia. Thinking of pulling a long night at your desk? Hopefully that cup of coffee is your first one today.
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