Health benefits of vanilla

Wikipedia discusses the health benefits of the world's second most expensive spice:

In old medicinal literature, vanilla is described as an aphrodisiac and a remedy for fevers. These purported uses have never been scientifically proven, but it has been shown that vanilla does increase levels of catecholamines (including epinephrine, more commonly known as adrenaline), and as such can also be considered mildly addictive. In an in-vitro test vanilla was able to block quorum sensing in bacteria. This is medically interesting because in many bacteria quorum sensing signals function as a switch for virulence. The microbes only become virulent when the signals indicate that they have the numbers to resist the host immune system response.*

The adrenaline kick is certainly for real. Be sure you are eating real vanilla, not synthetic product. Otherwise you deprive those farmers in Africa, Mexico, and Indonesia of their livelihood. But worst of all, you cheat yourself of the genuine vanilla experience.
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* Source: Inhibition of bacterial quorum sensing by vanilla extract.