Lapacho tea is made from tree bark.
It has been used as a herbal medicine by some native tribes, and there were attempts to hype it as a cure for all sorts of things. Scientific evidence does for the most part not support that, though. The claim as a cure for cancer has been disproven, and others, such as reducing skin redness, are based only on one study.
So it should technically be considered as one of the things that may or may not help a little more than water for some people, like green tea. Clearly no strong effect, such as Lisdexamfetamine.
I started taking it over 20 years ago. There was a suspicion of a yeast infection at the time, lab results came back negative, but in the meantime, I googled a bit and tried it. (Yeast infections are one of the many things it’s supposed to help with, probably also a false claim.)
I did feel great in the week where I tried it, but my trust in the scientific method is very strong. The most likely explanation was a placebo effect, combined with drinking more than usual and avoiding dehydration, possibly a minor deficit of a micro nutrient it contains.
What it seemed to “fix”? For once what I now know to be undiagnosed ADD symptoms, as well as minor digestion problems that are always part of my life. (Poo too hard, too soft, too slimy, but rarely requiring medical intervention.)
Over the next decades, I occasionally bought a pack and drank it over a few weeks, and that always correlated with feeling great and enormous productivity and clarity of mind. Still, lots of more likely explanations for that other than Lapacho “curing” anything:
- reverse causality: Being in a good productive mood -> energy for making tea
- Usually not drinking enough water -> now that I made tee, I should not waste it
- Confirmation bias, placebo effect, law of big numbers. Lots of people have ups and downs, and certainly one of them in the world would happen to make Lapacho tea during theirs.
- Psychologically / subconsciously associating it with the first 1 or 2 times, where the improvement was just by chance.
But it just happened again. I went back to it, and I switched from a general mood of “life is hard right now” into a new golden age within a few hours. Again with a completely fixed digestion.
And this time, I question the science. It just happened too often. I had an exact measure of how much I drank before. I did not change the amount of caffeine, meds, or food. I definitely did not expect an effect, certainly not a strong one. I took various supplements before to avoid a deficit.
My theory why it might work? I think its mild anti inflammatory effect has not entirely been disproven, and maybe that happens to hit the exact spot of my specific problem. Maybe morbus crohn or similar, also related to gut bacteria somehow affecting or even causing ADHD (controversial, lack of evidence, but not clearly proven to be false, afaik!).
Well, if one of you has a similar situation, minor, but life-long digestion problems combined with ADD, feel free to give it a try. I drink a lot of it, like 1 or 2 cans. Not during pregnancy or when trying for a baby! (Unless that also is false.)
I describe a personal experience. Trust in established treatments with scientific evidence, not an inferred causality and applicability to your situation.
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Lapacho contains Theobromine which is a stimulant similar to Caffeine (it’s milder and longer lasting).
That would probably explain it helping with ADHD symptoms.
This one I’m always a little bit skeptical of (the general claim for Theobromine, not Lapacho)
Otherwise extra dark chocolate would have an distinct effect…
I am unable to find concentrations of Theobromine in Lapacho, or anything actually suggesting Lapacho contains Theobromine, so I’m not too sure where you got that idea from
Some sites claim it does contain trace amounts of that, but I can’t find a reputable, scientific source. Even weak stimulants, like a cup of black tea, do help a bit, but it’s magnitudes less than what lapacho appears to do for me.
Edit: A general pattern with stimulants though is that weak & long lasting works best for me. Especially guarana > coffee. It would fit.
Thanks for sharing, I had never heard of this. What does it taste like?
earthy and vanilla, rather good
The theobromine another person speculated might be part of it, but then you might experience similar from dark chocolate.
My speculation is the quinones and ortho-quinones; they’re anti oxidants. Dopamine and serotonin both oxidize into quinone forms. In the quinone form, it seems they inhibit dopamine transport and slow cellular energy production, along with damaging some other stuff along the way.
But by introducing quinones from dietary sources, those steal the oxygen back from the dopamine quinone form to revert it back to its original catechol form.
Plant quinones aren’t hugely bioavailable though, and are not water soluble (they are absorbed in the small intestine), so it might not be this at all, especially because tea, or maybe it’s only partly this.
Given that you have a “temperamental” gut though, it could be affecting absorption of the other many quinones in lots of different foods. Perhaps have a look at how many different kinds of Vitamin K there are in foods and how much you get in your diet of each. (Ever tried natto? It’s an acquired taste though…)
but my trust in the scientific method is very strong
There’s trust in the scientific method, and then there’s actively dismissing what your body is signalling. If you want to get hardcore, try ruling out your water intake hypothesis by brewing a different kind of tea for a few weeks. Try ruling out your good mood hypothesis by actively forcing yourself to make the tea when you’re feeling shitty. Or asking your partner (if available) to brew it for you. Don’t get dangerous with the experiments, of course.
Science is the best we’ve got, but it’s not all-knowing or infallible.
Thanks! I was not aware of this mechanism regarding quinones and how taking more might affect neuro transmitters.
My own theory was based around minor inflammation - not severe enough to be obvious in a blood sample or call a doctor to action, but living in a permanent state of “heck” rather than hell.
As for running more tests, that’s one of the reasons why I’m back on the theory: I’ve had a different tea for weeks, and the switch back to lapacho was “random” in the sense that a shipment didn’t come and I stumbled upon the old pack of lapacho on the shelf as a replacement. So the amount of warm liquids stayed the same, and the days were “randomised” in a way.
Why don’t studies pick it up? I suspect it might be a niche condition, combination of a few specific minor issues which benefits so greatly. So in a scientific randomised study, those 1% also benefit greatly, like I did, but it would not be statistically significant. They’d need a MASSIVE amount of participants with a control group to notice in the numbers that 1% more report severe improvement than in the placebo group. Impossible that everybody with ADHD will benefit like I did; they’d have found that long ago. Maybe some kind of subgroup of ADHD+gut+mildly autistic.
Also, science is not that interested in it after they made “cure for cancer” claims which turned out to be completely false.
I don’t think you’re wrong about the inflammation, because naphthoquinones are anti-oxidants, and anti-oxidants are anti-inflammatory.
So, when dopamine or whatever else oxidizes into quinone form, they go and cause damage. This is “oxidative stress”, a term frequently co-opted by snake oil merchants, but it’s a real thing. When your body experiences oxidative stress, it triggers inflammation. Anti-oxidants help prevent oxidative stress by converting things like dopamine quinone back to catechol form, so they aren’t wreaking havoc. Converting it back to catechol also means it can do what dopamine is supposed to be doing for you. So you get both less inflammation, and the usable dopamine you need, which helps your ADHD.
Inflammation and oxidative stress is also a self-perpetuating cycle - inflammation will cause oxidative stress and vice versa. So how much of your experience might be from reducing inflammation and how much is from having higher concentration of usable dopamine is not easy to determine - if it is any of this at all.
There are some very benign experiments you can try with your diet if you’re interested. Natto is one of them, increasing the amount of leafy greens you eat like spinach (with a source of fat at the same time) is another, ideally alongside other colourful fruit and veg. If those also make you feel better, it may well be the quinones. If they don’t, it could still be the quinones, but something else might be contributing from the lapacho or your body. I do know from my own experience that when my diet has a lot of diverse fruit and veg that my symptoms also reduce, but… It’s hard to keep that up, for obvious reasons, so I’m actually interested in trying this tea myself.
Just don’t accidentally take your ADHD meds within 30mins to an hour of eating fruit high in Vitamins C, especially citrus. It won’t kill you or anything, but there is undesirable interaction.
science is not that interested in it after they made “cure for cancer” claims
I wouldn’t be so sure about that. It seems β-Lapachone is still being very actively studied for its anti-cancer properties. It’s clearly not a silver bullet, but almost nothing ever is.
ADHD studies are just not as attractive a research topic, especially compared to cancer, so despite the link between ADHD and oxidative stress / inflammation being relatively established, I doubt lapacho will be studied for this anytime soon.
