Peppers Seem To Protect Against Parkinson's 161
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."
ah tobacco (Score:5, Insightful)
You wont get Parkinson's because you'll be dead before it could form.
(sardonic)
Re:Paging Mr. Fox (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Paging Mr. Fox (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ah tobacco (Score:4, Insightful)
Native Americans smoked the heck out of it for centuries, and you never really hear about them dying in droves from lung or other cancer caused by smoking tobacco.
Given the low average life expectancy of people living that close to nature, or in pre-industrial society in general, I doubt any negative effects of tobacco would have had any statistically-significant impact. Same with genetic tendency of people from sub-Saharan Africa towards higher rates of heart disease -- the vast majority of people didn't live long enough for that to matter. Likewise with lactose tolerance -- when food is chronically scarce, the extra calories from being able to consume dairy products are much more important than the drawbacks of the accompanying increase in saturated fat consumption. It's only in the last couple centuries or so that things like heart disease, stroke, and cancer have climbed up the causes-of-death list, because people have (mostly) stopped dying of starvation, malnutrition, and water/airborne diseases.