Peppers Seem To Protect Against Parkinson's

DavidHumus writes "A recent study indicates that consuming vegetables from the Solanaceae family, which includes tomatoes and peppers (as well as tobacco), decreases the risk of contracting Parkinson's disease. Earlier studies had shown that smoking tobacco seems to provide protection against the disease and the newer one seems to confirm that the key ingredient is nicotine, which is present in some vegetables like peppers."

Comments

nightshade family

[WGFCrafty]

&The title says peppers but it says nicotine is actually the chemical at work. There are actually a few positive effects nicotine possesses, the negative effects of smoking are mediated by the oxidation products of cigarettes.

There are actually quite a few common plants in the family with varying levels of nicotine in each part (tomatoes vs the leaves). Some, like datura (moon flower/jimsons or devils weed) contain scopalamine and atropine and are deleriants. From wiki:

The family includes Solanum (potato, tomato, eggplant), Physalis philadelphica (tomatillo), Capsicum (chili pepper, bell pepper), Petunia, Datura, (Cape gooseberry flower), Mandragora (mandrake), Nicotiana (tobacco), Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), Lycium barbarum (wolfberry), and Physalis peruviana.

Re:nightshade family

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, crazy. Yes, genocidal.

When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, "there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it...." Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas. ...
Past the elementary and high schools, there are only occasional hints of something else. Samuel Eliot Morison, the Harvard historian, was the most distinguished writer on Columbus, the author of a multivolume biography, and was himself a sailor who retraced Columbus's route across the Atlantic. In his popular book Christopher Columbus, Mariner, written in 1954, he tells about the enslavement and the killing: "The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide."

That is on one page, buried halfway into the telling of a grand romance. In the book's last paragraph, Morison sums up his view of Columbus:

"He had his faults and his defects, but they were largely the defects of the qualities that made him great-his indomitable will, his superb faith in God and in his own mission as the Christ-bearer to lands beyond the seas, his stubborn persistence despite neglect, poverty and discouragement. But there was no flaw, no dark side to the most outstanding and essential of all his qualities-his seamanship."

One can lie outright about the past. Or one can omit facts which might lead to unacceptable conclusions. Morison does neither. He refuses to lie about Columbus. He does not omit the story of mass murder; indeed he describes it with the harshest word one can use: genocide.

But he does something else-he mentions the truth quickly and goes on to other things more important to him. Outright lying or quiet omission takes the risk of discovery which, when made, might arouse the reader to rebel against the writer. To state the facts, however, and then to bury them in a mass of other information is to say to the reader with a certain infectious calm: yes, mass murder took place, but it's not that important-it should weigh very little in our final judgments; it should affect very little what we do in the world.

Howard Zinn, The People’s History of the United States

Among the Taino people of Hispaniola, Columbus decreed a system of tribute, requiring each adult to submit a specified quantity of gold, on pain of death. But he was also fervently determined to spread the Christian faith. Christianize or exploit? Convert or enslave? The two goals were plainly antithetical. For a time, Columbus hoped to resolve the quandary by enslaving the diabolical Caribs and converting the more benign peoples. But what did conversion even mean? A priest wrote that “force and craft” were required to impose Christianity on the Indians, but there was little hope that they would observe the rites after their overlords had left.

The Less Than Heroic Christopher Columbus, IAN W. TOLL,The Less Than Heroic Christopher Columbus

I'm just taking the first things I find on Google, this shit isn't hard to find

Tobacco...right

[justthinkit]

Anecdotal, but the only relative I have that smokes...is the only one that got Parkinson's.

Summary is misleading

[sessamoid]

The article does not "confirm that the key ingredient is nicotine, which is present in some vegetables like peppers."

From TFA

"Our study is the first to investigate dietary nicotine and risk of developing Parkinson's disease," said Dr. Searles Nielsen. "Similar to the many studies that indicate tobacco use might reduce risk of Parkinson's, our findings also suggest a protective effect from nicotine, or perhaps a similar but less toxic chemical in peppers and tobacco."

Tobacco and solanaceae plants have in common a lot of chemicals, including multiple alkaloids like atropine. Potato plants fall into the same family, as do all chili pepper plants. While this is an interesting study, it does NOT confirm that nicotine is the chemical in solanaceae that is protective against Parkinson's disease, even before you take into account that this was only a retrospective study.

Re:Paging Mr. Fox

[ClioCJS]

News flash: Jokes come at the expense of somebody|thing. Sometimes it's you.

Re:ah tobacco

[hawkinspeter]

Yes, I agree completely about average life expectancy which is most strongly affected by infant deaths which is the main area that modern medicine has made huge advances in.

What I was attempting to point out is that it is a fallacy that most people in medieval times (or earlier) only lived until they were 30 or so. Yes, the average life expectancy at birth was approximately 30 years for medieval Britain, but at age 21 the average life expectancy would be 64 which is not very different to the situation today in some countries (world average is around 67).

By the way, thanks for twisting my explanation into some hare-brained argument.