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)
Tobacco...right (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Tobacco...right (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe his predisposition to get Parkinson's caused the desire to smoke..
Nicotine ameliorates some of the symptoms of schizophrenia, and nearly everyone with schizophrenia smokes [wikipedia.org]. So it is possible that a similar phenomenon may occur with parkinson's
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Maybe his predisposition to get Parkinson's caused the desire to smoke..
Nicotine ameliorates some of the symptoms of schizophrenia, and nearly everyone with schizophrenia smokes [wikipedia.org]. So it is possible that a similar phenomenon may occur with parkinson's
I have schizophrenia, and I don't smoke.
Re:Tobacco...right (Score:4, Funny)
yes I do!
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Actually AFAIK it's not the nicotine in the cigarettes which kills you. It's all of the burning byproducts. Nicotine is responsible for making you addict, though.
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...extracting the nicotine from 10 cigarettes using isopropyl alcohol and then evaporating the alcohol so you are left with a nicotine paste. 10 cigarettes are enough to kill 3 people.
Wrong. A regular cigarette contains something like 0.7-1 mg of nicotine. LD-50 for humans is about 30-60 mg [wikipedia.org]. A minuscule application of common sense would also indicate that 3 1/3 cigarettes are not enough to kill anyone outright. Sorry to deprive you of your amusing little party anecdote, but cigarettes are not *that* lethal :)
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It's pretty funny how many uninformed people like to spout off on this site. I see several people telling me how my source is wrong. I thought that perhaps it is and did a quick Google check. According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], you get 1mg of absorbed nicotine from smoking a cigarette. Well, we aren't talking about smoking them, so you are wrong on that fact. This site [blogspot.com] talks about extracting the nicotine for use in e-cigarettes. Starting with 4g of tobacco they get 15ml of liquid at a concentration of 2.5mg/ml. That is
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Yup, seems you are right - my apologies. My original source for that information was an MD student, who'd heard this question ("can three cigarettes be lethal?") asked and answered in the negative at a lecture. Apparently his lecturer made the same mistake of mixing up absorbed dosage from a cigarette with actual nicotine content. You learn something new every day.
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I must say, my hat goes off to you for admitting your mistake. It is an attribute that I feel is lacking in too large a portion of humanity. Good form! And my apologies for the somewhat (actually extremely) cocky attitude expressed in the last sentence of my last post. It was uncalled for and now I feel like an ass. :-/
My main surprise was in how readily in absorbs through the skin. Before I learned that nicotine was so deadly I never would have thought that getting some on your skin would be a big deal. I
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"My main surprise was in how readily in absorbs through the skin."
Growing up in an area that included tobacco farms, I never heard anyone actually refer to it as Green Tobacco Sickness [wikipedia.org], but it was common to hear people talk about getting sick the first time they worked "pulling tobacco".
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Sounds like yet another "anarchist's cookbook", a fine tome of mis-information and instructions more likely to kill the reader than his target if it does anything at all.
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Mixed with DMSO it will enter blood stream through the skin quite fast and efficiently.
Anything mixed with DMSO can then be transported through the skin, many poisoners used to use DMSO mixed with their favorite poison such as arsenic, strychnine, and such then lace a letter you perhaps write to your target, let the letter dry then with gloved hands place it carefully into envelope and mail to target.
DMSO was to be banned after a few poisonings but it was just removed from the public's eye, it used to be so
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Interestingly, without the MAO inhibitors in cagarette smoke, the nicotine is considerably less addictive.
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You wont get Parkinson's because you'll be dead before it could form.
(sardonic)
Not always. Grandpa was a heavy smoker. Lived to be nearly 80. Had Parkinson's real bad, though, so any benefits evidently didn't come through for him.
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"Grandpa was a heavy smoker. Lived to be nearly 80. Had Parkinson's real bad."
How the fuck did he light his cigarettes then?
Carefully.
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These stats are really only about Big Tobacco "tobacco." Big Tobacco takes real tobacco, leaf, stalk, root, etc, and mixes it up with chemicals and sucks out the nicotine. Then they chop it up some more into a mash, squeeze it and make a paper out of it, adding back nicotine along with 300 carcinogenic chemicals, including residual pesticides, including drugs that numb your throat and drugs that help nicotine get into your blood stream faster, all designed to make smoking more addictive. The paper is cut up
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.
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Yes and no. There's more people living to extreme old age these days, but we haven't really increased the maximum lifespan.
Sorry, we have most certainly increased the average life expectancy.
Your argument is basically "if you didn't die in childbirth, or early from malnutrition or one of numerous childhood diseases that are now eradicated or very rare, and if you didn't ever get a disease as an adult that we could now trivially treat with drugs, or die from an infection that we would nowadays just sterilise and bandage, or ever have an accident that left you unable to hunt/labour in the fields, then it was quite possible to l
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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 tod
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Even after correcting for an early death in childhood, people on average didn't live as long as today. Main reason are bacterial infections we routinely cure today with antibiotics, and which can be deadly if left untreated.
The Native Americans had less disease because they practiced less animal husbandry; most of them, none at all. They only got horses after Europeans showed up with them and a lot of them escaped and many of them didn't even associate with canines. The Pomo people who still live in the area now known as Lake County, CA used to regularly live past a hundred years on a diet primarily consisting of fish and acorns; today that lifestyle is unavailable as the oaks were cut down by settlers offered one dollar per w
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People would get sick and die (typical age would be 70-80 - assuming one survived the first four years of life). That's it. You would get sick. You wouldn't have "cancer" or "parkinsons" or "diabetes" or whatever fancy name is given nowadays, you would just very simply get sick and die.
Tobacco would be as much a killer as it is now, maybe even more so, they just didn't know it was the tobacco that killed them. The reason we have many people dying from tobacco, or too much saturated fats, or things like that
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Until the 20th century, Most people were not expect to live past their 50's
So before lung cancer hits, chances are you would be dead, for disease, infection, malnutrition, dehydration, killed in battle/hunting, general accidents...
I am not debating modern Cigarettes have been made to be unnaturally harmful, compared to natural tobacco. (That is why you see lower cancer rates with more natural sources pipes and cigars) Also Americans have a problem with moderation too. In some countries where smoking is p
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I came across this the other day - List of additives in cigarettes [wikipedia.org] ... wonderful
"One significant issue is that while all these chemical compounds have been approved as additives to food, they were not tested by burning. Burning changes the properties of chemicals. More than 4,000 chemical compounds are created by burning a cigarette."
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Put that way, maybe Windows isn't quite so bad after all . . .
hawk
Tomacco. (Score:5, Funny)
Tomacco.
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Paging Mr. Fox (Score:3, Funny)
I know it's in bad taste, but I'd pay anything to see Michael J Fox doing a Frank's RedHot Commercial splattering sauce everywhere while having a case of the shakes.
I PUT THAT SH*T ON EVERYTHING!!!!
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Re:Paging Mr. Fox (Score:4, Insightful)
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Lacking a sense of humour is called a neurological disease now?
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At whose expense comes this joke?
Re: Paging Mr. Fox (Score:3, Funny)
The person reading it, primarily
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I leave you with words of the late great Carlin
Like rape. They'll say, "you can't joke about rape. Rape's not funny."
I say, "fuck you, I think it's hilarious. How do you like that?"
I can prove to you that rape is funny. Picture Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd.
See, hey why do you think they call him "Porky," eh? I know what you're going to say.
"Elmer was asking for it. Elmer was coming on to Porky.
Porky couldn't help himself, he got a hard- on, he got horney, he lost control, he went out of his mind."
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Your right, it is in very bad taste. You should be ashamed of yourself and why Slashdot awards you points is beyond me. Having a Neurological disease myself, it is very offensive. You are the kind of person who laughs at others misfortunes. Sad!
Mods got this and the GP wrong. I used up my points earlier today.
Not only is the GP insensitive, his post is absent of entertainment. It's boring as hell.
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I'm sure Michael J. Fox is very ashamed of the jokes he's made about Michael J. Fox.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI4lFjWoFqc [youtube.com]
Re:Paging Mr. Fox (Score:5, Insightful)
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I have a neurological disease and didn't think it offensive. I also didn't think it funny. You choose whether to be offended. Choose to not be offended, and you'll be a happier person.
that's like saying that you can choose to be a homosexual.
j fox putting sauce everywhere would be a funny advertisement tho.
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I have a neurological disease and didn't think it offensive. I also didn't think it funny. You choose whether to be offended. Choose to not be offended, and you'll be a happier person.
You are, of course, right.
However, I still find the whole justification that just because something's a joke no one should take it too seriously, extremely dangerous and wrong-headed.
Nazi satirical writings and cartoons of Jews were very far from being "just jokes" that everyone should be able to laugh off. Like any potential act of speech or writing, jokes have consequences.
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Your right, it is in very bad taste. You should be ashamed of yourself and why Slashdot awards you points is beyond me. Having a Neurological disease myself, it is very offensive. You are the kind of person who laughs at others misfortunes. Sad!
How the fuck has this been modded funny?
Whether you agree with him or not, there is absolutely no evidence he's joking.
How to quit smoking (Score:1)
Eat lots of peppers and tomatoes.
As for ciggies protecting against Parkinson's... well... of course it does. If you die young because of lung cancer, you're never gonna get Parkinson's. Right? :)
nightshade family (Score:5, Informative)
&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.
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There are actually a few positive effects nicotine possesses, the negative effects of smoking are mediated by the oxidation products of cigarettes..
Don't forget the addictive nature of nicotine.
Re:nightshade family (Score:5, Interesting)
Insects are anything but addicted to it. It' kills 'em dead. That's the entire reason the nicotine is flowing through plants' veins in the first place: it's their natural insecticide.
Now why anybody would wanna smoke insecticide.... ;-)
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nicotenne will kill people dead as well if injected instead of smoked.
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Air will kill people dead [sic] as well if injected instead of inhaled.
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Actually, that depends on the amount, and whether or not the person is a smoker. Heavy smokers create a tolerance that is actually pretty hard to overcome.
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Toxicology [wikipedia.org]
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Insects are anything but addicted to it. It' kills 'em dead. That's the entire reason the nicotine is flowing through plants' veins in the first place: it's their natural insecticide.
That's why they stay in one place; they are too high to move.
Logic (Score:2)
That's the entire reason the nicotine is flowing through plants' veins in the first place: it's their natural insecticide.
Now why anybody would wanna eat insecticide by having a salad...
Chocolate is bad for dogs. It is good for people.
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I hope it goes well! You can send me a consulting fee from that extra $300, eh?
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There are actually a few positive effects nicotine possesses, the negative effects of smoking are mediated by the oxidation products of cigarettes..
Don't forget the addictive nature of nicotine.
Morphine is addictive too. Being addicted to something that saves your life is not necessarily a bad thing.
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If someone with Parkinson's misses a dose of L-dopa, they get the shakes.
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Yeah, silly English. I was coming to look if it was specifically black, white, green, tellicherry, or Szechuan. I wish people would just call "bell peppers" "sweet bell chilis", along with all the rest of the species.
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Some countries call them "capsicums", even when speaking English.
Like most misnamed items from the New World, this was apparently Columbus' fault. He tasted a chili pepper, his crazy genocidal brain decided it tasted like peppercorn, and the rest is history.
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Re the use of the word pepper - it applied to foods that were peppery. He wasn't a botanist. He was an explorer. He used the commonly used vernacular of his time
Are you know going to call the pilgrims "crazy and genocidal" because they called maize "corn." To the 17th C English "corn" was any cereal crop.
PS. Please nobody say anything as dumb as "he was lost." He was a f**king explorer. And if you look at a globe you'll see that he got his latitude correct. H
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Yes, crazy. Yes, genocidal.
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To be fair, his genocide was accidental, infecting Native Americans with numerous diseases. He also brought back syphilis.
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Electronic Cigerettes (Score:2)
Which makes me wonder if electronic cigarette products may not only be not bad for you, but even potentially beneficial as they give you a low dose of nicotine through vaporization without the oxidation caused by burning.
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It's not just nicotine. The same beneficial effects have been observed from several of the vanilloids and curcuminoids, including capsaicin (found in hot peppers) and curcumin. And it isn't just brain issues. They lower the risk of all sorts of damage caused by inflammation, including the risk of heart disease and stroke, and prevents metastasis and induces apoptosis in many types of cancer....
The average person would do well t
Been listening to Sgt. Pepper's for years (Score:5, Funny)
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So I got that goin' for me. Which is nice.
That won't help. You need Red Hot Chili Peppers.
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Lilacs and contraband [youtube.com]
I've got Santa Monica in my hand
A little.... Beatle mania when I can
And I've got two big bags of old Japan
They are not vegetables. (Score:1)
Tomatoes and peppers are fruit.
Remember "Sleeper"? (Score:5, Funny)
Woody Allen character in the distant future, noticing many people smoking, is told "we discovered that tobacco is good for you".
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Summary is misleading (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Or it could be that saying anything unambiguously good about nicotine these days is more taboo than the other N word. We must remenmbeer at all times to be sure we attribute all bad effects of smoking to nicotine. Only nicotine from your friendly pharmacist is exempt and then only in the form of patches and gum designed to stop smoking.
must be mixed! (Score:1)
Healthiest Salad For Long Life (Score:1)
Spicy food and cigars :-) (Score:4, Funny)
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Looks like eating spicy food and smoking cigars is good for you, thanks science :-)
Studies like these come out all the time. There seems to be both ill effects and beneficial effects for just about everything, including water: Drink too much of it and you'll die. "Everything in moderation," seems to work for most things. Determining at what concentration it's considered "moderation" is the tricky bit -- The difference between kills you and makes you stronger is often simply the dosage amount.
Aha! (Score:3, Interesting)
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We evolve a sense of taste for a reason. Perhaps researchers should be using information like this as a starting point for further investigation of many things.
Ammm a little detail ... (Score:2)
Patches (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:MJF (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but ya know that time traveling shit did have some side effects.
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time traveling shit
Now there's a scary thought.
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What would we dooooo, baby, without HOSTS...shalalalaaaaa....
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Wasn't Michael J. Fox a longtime smoker? Doesn't seem to have protected him.
And not everyone who smokes dies of lung cancer, and not everyone who drinks heavily dies of liver disease. These things are averages, there will always be outliers when it comes to human beings.
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Not if you use ghost peppers, it goes from pain to numbness. Unless you touch your crotch without washing your hands, then it becomes the fire pits of hell.
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Ghost peppers and things that are at the 800,000Scollvill units point or higher.. I have had http://www.hotsauceplanet.com/Mad-Dog-38-Special-Pepper-Extract-p/hsp1497md.htm [hotsauceplanet.com] Mad Dog 38 special , it's a Ghost pepper sauce concentrate that is at 2,000,000-3,000,000 units, they do something to you.
My tolerance for hot stuff is now drastically changed. Daves insanity sauce is like ketchup to me, a nicely spicy ketchup, but I use enough of it on things that make mere mortals just stand there with their mouth
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Re:Fresh vegetables and fruits (Score:4, Funny)
That reminds me of some experiments to halt urinary incontinence by squirting chilli oil into people's bladders, on the assumption that by deadening some nerves their bladders would release urine less easily. The test subjects apparently insisted that it worked perfectly the first time and there was no need to do it again.
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I think tomatoes are very popular, as part of ketchup.
I don't think that quite comes under the definition of "fresh" somehow.
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Caffeine is known to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's. Capsaicin (from peppers) is also commonly believed to reduce Alzheimer's risk (and strokes and various other problems), as is cinnamon (which contains small amounts of capsaicin), and I would expect the effects of nicotine to be similar. The reason they work is that they all reduce inflammation.
This has all been fairly well understood in the naturopath community for many, many years, but it has only been in about the past decade that the scientific comm