Research suggests that eating foods containing nicotine, even in small amounts, such as peppers and tomatoes, may reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease.
A new study reveals that vegetables from the Solanaceae family - a family of flowering plants, many of which are an edible source of nicotine - may provide a protective effect against Parkinson's disease. The study suggests that eating foods containing nicotine, even in small amounts, such as peppers and tomatoes, may reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease.
Parkinson's disease (tremor in Hebrew) causes a disturbance in body movement and originates from the loss of brain cells that produce the neurotransmitter (a chemical that transmits nerve impulses) dopamine. The symptoms of the disease include tremors of the muscles of the face, head, arms and legs, tremors in the limbs, loss of balance and moving slower than usual. In the US, almost a million people suffer from this disease, and 60,000 people are diagnosed with it every year. About ten million people worldwide have this disease, according to the Parkinson's Disease Foundation. Currently, there is no cure for Parkinson's disease, but the symptoms of the disease can be treated with drugs and treatments such as deep brain stimulation.
In previous studies it was discovered that smoking cigarettes and other forms of tobacco, a plant belonging to the solanaceae family, reduces the relative risk of Parkinson's disease. However, the researchers were not able to determine with certainty whether nicotine, or other active substances in tobacco are responsible for this effect, or perhaps people who develop the disease are less adapted to the use of this plant due to changes in their brains that occur long before the disease can be diagnosed.
Of course, the harms of smoking are greater than its benefits, and even if there is one, it is better to consume it in another way and not in the way of smoking which injects tar and dozens of other toxins into the body in addition to nicotine which is also toxic in the quantities found in cigarettes. Therefore, if it is possible to consume the little nicotine needed by the body to protect against Parkinson's, it should be done by eating tomatoes and peppers.
In the current study, the researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle examined 490 patients who had long been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease while comparing it to a control group of 640 other people who did not have any neurological diseases. The subjects answered questionnaires in which they were required to detail what their regular diet is and whether they use different tobacco products, where the researchers defined this use as smoking more than a hundred cigarettes cumulatively over the years, or regular use of cigars, pipes or other smokeless tobacco products.
The research findings indicated that, in general, the consumption of vegetables in food did not affect the risk of Parkinson's disease, however, as the consumption of edible vegetables from the cruciferous family increased, the risk of Parkinson's disease decreased, with the pepper vegetable showing the highest dependence between these two factors . The researchers noted that the protection against Parkinson's disease was found mainly in women and men with little or no prior use of tobacco smoking, when tobacco is a plant that contains much higher amounts of nicotine than the other vegetables listed in the questionnaires.
"The study we conducted is the first ever to examine the relationship between the consumption of nicotine derived from vegetables and the risk of developing Parkinson's disease," said the lead researcher. "Similar to many other studies that indicated that the use of tobacco may reduce the risk of developing Parkinson's disease, our findings also suggest a protective effect of the substance nicotine, or perhaps of another substance found in pepper and tobacco that is similar to nicotine but less toxic than it."
The researchers recommend conducting additional studies to verify and expand their findings, and they believe that their new findings and those of other researchers in the field could lead to the development of treatments that may prevent the onset of Parkinson's disease.
More of the topic in Hayadan:
15 תגובות
Avner
You are a disgusting and stupid man. Since when are Helicobacter bacteria or Candida yeasts in plants?
A lie and a lie, she wrote that all salty vegetables are unhealthy for the body, cause candida and Helicobacter pylori, which cause serious intestinal problems, mental illnesses
Hot pepper, cucumbers in salt, tomatoes, smoking a cigarette, coffee helps and makes you feel better...
Upon further inspection, it becomes clear that in this article the readers are being fed slurs, sorry, peppers.
Here is an apparently unbiased scientific study on the nicotine content of vegetables.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199308053290619
It turns out that the amount of nicotine in the peppers is not particularly significant, so they were not tested at all (except for testing green pepper, for which it was proven that the amount of nicotine in it is one big *zero*).
Among the common vegetables, there is a moderate amount of nicotine in ripe tomatoes. There is 23 times the amount of nicotine in eggplants compared to ripe tomatoes. There is also a significant amount of nicotine in other vegetables such as potatoes or cauliflower.
In a way that doesn't surprise me: the prices of tomatoes, eggplants and potatoes most of the year are much cheaper than the prices of peppers (which, as mentioned, are a dubious source of nicotine). There is no need to promote the sale of tomatoes and potatoes, because it is a basic food whose price is reasonable most of the time.
However – – – my impression is that this bizarre study was promoted by the pepper growers to buy their precious wares.
As I already said in another comment, if at all nicotine is useful for Parkinson's it can be obtained in pennies not by eating vegetables.
Uzi
I also don't know anyone who was harmed by eating three hundred grams of caviar per day. Still eating caviar is not recommended for those who are not particularly rich.
The whole thing is a matter of financial cost and health damage from eating a lot of pepper: it is much cheaper and healthier to consume nicotine in pills or from a cigarette particle than to eat a kilo of pepper a day. For example: those who eat a kilo of pepper per day will have to give up eating more beneficial foods. It is also not clear if it is good from a health point of view, because it prevents eating other nutritious foods.
Why so much skepticism?
This is a study that gives direction reading.
In any case, I don't know anyone who has been harmed by eating peppers...
point
It also seems to me that it is difficult to do research based on the morbidity of smokers. Smokers have a shorter life expectancy and die from smoking diseases, which are heart attacks, strokes and lung cancer, before they reach old age when Parkinson's begins.
Saying that smoking prevents Parkinson's is like saying that cyanide prevents cancer.
Several studies have been carried out on the subject of nicotine effects on PD, following observations that showed that smokers suffer less from this terrible disease.
The tobacco plant is a member of the solanaceae family, so other less harmful solanaceae were tested, such as tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers. The studies show a correlation between the consumption of these fruits/vegetables and a low incidence of PD.
Beyond that, the mechanism by which nicotine affects the body is also known (it binds to neuroreceptors that usually bind to acetylcholine).
Of course, you should pay attention to the subheading: "Research suggests that eating foods containing nicotine, even in small amounts, such as peppers and tomatoes, may reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease."
That is - there is no reason to look for anything negative in this article. On the contrary, an intelligent person should encourage the continuation of the research and hope for more positive findings.
Not everyone is intelligent……
It was written by an interested party, although not necessarily by the tobacco manufacturers. I will explain later.
There is no need to eat peppers to get nicotine. The natural source that contains nicotine in a huge amount is tobacco. It is also possible to produce nicotine synthetically, but it is not clear if synthetic production is cheaper than refining tobacco leaves.
Since the nicotine can be preserved in cheap tablets, there is no economic incentive to extract it from eating expensive vegetables where it is found in a minimal amount. Furthermore, if you want to bypass the need to buy pills, you can make a small amount of nicotine at home by distilling a cigarette or unrolled tobacco at home, at a minimal cost compared to producing it from pepper.
And finally. It does not seem to me that the research is at such an advanced stage that it is known with certainty that nicotine consumption improves the prevention of Parkinson's or its development. You don't need to plan one way of eating or another based on immature studies. Reminds me of the immature claim that eating vitamin C is a cure for the flu, after twenty or thirty years of confusing our brains on this matter (except for the vegetarians and vegans who are fascinated by such nonsense).
The article seems balanced to me and even the words of the researchers do not encourage smoking.
I checked on several reliable websites - the research is not funded by tobacco companies, and was even published on PubMed.
And emphasized - the harm from smoking is much greater than the protection from PD.
It's hard to know, in any case I expressed my disapproval of smoking in the article. Let's hope we didn't fall into the trap.
Sounds like a tobacco company study
The electronic cigarette allows inhalation of nicotine without carcinogens and tar