did you know in medieval times Italian women actually took the juice
from a deadly nightshade plant known as belladonna to dilate their pupils to appear more attractive
it's been said that our pupils will dilate when we look at somebody we love somebody we're excited
about in fact your pupils could be dilating right now just thinking about somebody and in
this video i wanted to go over why and how this happens let's focus in hey howdy everybody this
is Dr. Neal Guymon, Dr. EyeGuy, with the channel that keeps your eyes healthy and your vision clear
now there are many many different things that can influence pupil dilation and pupil constriction
one known thing that can influence pupil dilation also known as mydriasis is through the sympathetic
nervous system when your sympathetic nervous system is stimulated this can kick you into a
fight or flight response this can make your heart beat faster make you breathe deeper and
also cause your pupils to dilate now this is an automatic response when your pupils
dilate you'll have more light in your eyes it'll allow you to be more alert and be more responsive
so when we see or think about somebody that we love or we're excited or we have strong feelings
for them our brain can release this norepinephrine it will also release dopamine oxytocin serotonin
which are called the happy hormones so when you look at your significant other and you have strong
emotions for them there's a good chance that your eyes are dilating in response to the chemical
reactions in your body now you can have these same reactions when you're on a roller coaster
or if you happen to stumble upon a bear when you're hiking the fight or flight response
will kick in and your eyes will dilate before we keep going in the comments i'm curious to know if
you've ever noticed somebody's eyes dilate when they were looking at you now subconsciously men
in particular when they see a woman with dilated eyes that woman can appear more attractive mainly
because that woman might appear more interested or more excited or more attracted to the man and
this goes all the way back to medieval times like i mentioned in the beginning of the video
women would take the juice from a belladonna plant also known as beautiful lady and then take
the juices and put it in their eye to dilate their pupils to look more attractive to men
now one sad thing about this and a huge downside is that the deadly nightshade plant belladonna
can be deadly it contains a chemical called atropine which interferes with the parasympathetic
nervous system which interferes with the balance with the sympathetic nervous system causing the
sympathetic nervous system to override and causing that fight or flight response increased heart rate
and your pupils to dilate now if you actually ingested the berries from the nightshade plant
you could actually die now the juice from the berries that they used to put in their eyes
had high concentrations of atropine which caused the pupil dilation but because of the
high concentrations caused extreme blurry vision and could also cause long-term permanent vision
problems now here's a little tidbit doctors still can use atropine eye drops to dilate people's eyes
now the eye drops nowadays are a much much much smaller dose making it safe to use another drug
taken for belladonna is scopolamine a lot of people use scopolamine patches
for anti-nausea and anti-vomiting for motion sickness like when they go on a cruise and there
are a lot of people that will have a side effect from the scopolamine patch which will cause their
vision to get blurry up close and also cause an eye to dilate so yes your eyes can be dilating
when you look at somebody you love or you think about somebody that you love now like i said there
are many different things that can influence pupil dilation and pupil constriction if you
go and look at your significant other and their eyes don't dilate then don't think that they don't
love you or if you look at somebody and all of a sudden their eyes dilate that doesn't necessarily
mean that they're attracted to you they could be scared of you if you're looking for more eye facts
eye tips definitely check out my other videos right there make sure you like this video if
you liked it and subscribe for more eye content i'm Dr. Neal Guymon, Dr. EyeGuy, stay focused