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Fish Poison Makes Hot Feel Cold and Vice Versa
SoyChemist writes "Ciguatoxin causes bizarre neurological symptoms including temperature reversal, a burning sensation, and an imaginary feeling of loose teeth. It is produced by algae and accumulates in the fatty flesh of tropical fish. While traveling to the tropics, a man from England ate some bad seafood that contained the unusual poison. His story, and the tale of some unfortunate sailors of an earlier age who suffered the same affliction, appeared in the current issue of Practical Neurology and was summarized on the Wired Science Blog. Both the Wired blog and the peer-reviewed journal neglected to mention that the potent neurotoxin has been made from scratch by organic chemists."
In the Sea of Cortés (Golfo de California), there is a fish known by locals as the 'botete'. It is a type of puffer fish. It causes exactly this kind of problem.
Very interesting the way neurotoxins work...
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Ethanol is commonly known to give feelings of warmth, ; in fact, the movie A Time For Drunken Horses is so named because the winter weather is so harsh that the only way the Iranian Kurds can get horses to work is to give them liquor.
Incidentally, for those wondering why the synthesis of this is newsworthy, check out the structures of this and similar marine toxins. The synthesis of palytoxin, at the bottom, supposedly sent a number of grad students and postdocs to the hospital, as its intermediates are also insanely toxic.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
described the amusing case in the October issue of Practical Neurology
Amusing?
including temperature reversal, intense pruritus and increased nociception [...] improved over a period of 10 months
This sounds very unpleasant. This might be amusing if it happened to Osama, but otherwise, this isn't something you'd wish on someone's dog.
Yep, I was in Fiji in July, and they served some fish at our resort that was poisoned. I didn't eat any, my mom ate a small bit, but was fine. The resort owner and one other guest were quite ill for days, and their cat that ate the leftovers nearly died. Apparently there's no way to tell if the fish is infected, and cooking it doesn't destroy the toxin.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
Sorry, but that's probably not going to happen. The oil lobbies are too powerful, and won't hesitate to to make sure this never sees the market. It's happened before.
Have you ever heard of Synsepalum dulcificum, aka the Miracle berry? It contains a substance called Miraculin that alters the way humans taste. Basically, sour becomes sweet when you have some of it make contact with your tongue. Sounds like a great low calorie sugar substitute, right? I mean, sugar's not good for you, and this stuff would eliminate the need to put sugar in a lot of products.
Well, Miraculin was isolated, proven safe, but couldn't go to the market because the sugar lobby gave it the smack down. They knew that it could ravage the sugar industry, so they played strong arm. If this Ciguatoxin is proven safe and usable for keeping warm, and people would only need to heat their homes to safe levels instead of warm and comfortable tempatures, I'd wager that the oil industry would do the same thing and get the FDA to declare this stuff unsafe as well.
I just had the nausea and diarrhea, along with chills. None of the really freaky symptoms like they talk about here, or the long term recurrences. Like I said, it was a very mild case. The restaurant owner followed the OP's logic and slightly poisoned 20 people instead of badly harming one or two.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
According to wikipedia it doesn't. It makes cold things feel hot, but not the other way around.
Symptoms of Ciguatera poisoningCuriosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.