As my late wife discovered a food sensitivity to Nightshade plants, that are common in our diets, can mimic the symptoms of both Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis.
When we cleaned up our diets and got chemical based products out of our house, we switched to Hemp based cleaning and body products, her Lupus and RA symptoms went away and never returned.
Common Nightshades are:
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Eggplant
Peppers (including bell, cayenne pepper, and paprika).
Gojo berries are also Nightshades, they are not a 'superfood'.
The list is far longer than just those common ones.
Nightshade plants are funny. Apparently, repeated exposure to poison ivy can make you also react to cashews- my dad had to stop eating them for quite awhile after he'd had a few particularly bad exposures a few years in a row.
Aside from the notable tomato and potato, there's also cashew, eggplant, tobacco, chili and bell peppers, gooseberry, goji and huckleberries, and a few others.
For those allergic to the "nightshade alkaloids" (this is a handwave to a biological term I can never remember) the answer is "yes".
Mind, for those of us with such a sensitivity or allergy (it's both for me) - a lot of plants are unsafe. (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, goji berries, persimmon, and anything dosed too heavily with neonic pesticides sigh)
And those of us with this issue are fairly rare. Thankfully. The rest of you can enjoy this all!
This doesn't contradict what the GP said: you shouldn't ingest nightshade just because we've been able to extract and safely medicate its constituent chemicals.
Just because 2 things are related does not mean they are equally dangerous. Potatoes, tomatos, eggplants, and most peppers are in the Solanaceae family, same as deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna), which is extremely poisonous. Yet potatoes are a staple crop.
The commonly consumed pea types (yellow, sweet, snap, snow) have no risk of causing Lathyrism. Only wild peas pose a risk and those are outright banned in most nations. (notable exception, india, where it is part of several common dishes).
Seeds can't defend themselves so they all include some poisons, some well known and others more subtle. Just to point out one example, Lectins are in almost all seeds and are associated with gut tearing and autoimmune diseases. Even with FDA approval eating cottonseed may not be a good idea or truly safe.
Hum... That can't be a coincidence. Both plants are on the same family. Let me check...
Yup, Cashew produces urushiol also. Unlike pistachos, cashew shells must be removed before selling the fruits for this reason.
So cashew plants can trigger skin allergies. Is a common family thing. Harvesting this things burn the workers hands. My bet is that would be also unsafe for people allergic to poison ivy.
> Not everyone reacts to it, but when they do, it's pretty bad.
I have had it a couple times, with leaves brushing my skin. Huge, weeping sores all over my arms, chest, stomach (and worse), like leprosy (I imagine, anyways, never seen a photo of a leper). I can't even imagine eating it.
Similarly, I saw an episode of "Flavorful Origins" on Netflix, "Lacquer Seed Oil", which collected the fruits of the Lacquer tree (basically a poison ivy tree). They ground up the fruits and cooked the pressed oil to neutralize the urushiol (how did they not die from inhaling it??), and then they made a lovely tea with the oil with local bee larvae.
I never heard this before: "Plants produce toxins to avoid being eaten, such as psoralen, which is abundant in celery. Snacking at night introduces toxins that, at that hour, our repair systems are not ready to eliminate. There is also speculation that the major epidemic of epithelial cancers, such as colon cancer, in the U.S. is because of this."
My first introduction to urushiol was as a kid... there was a Japanese rhus tree [1] near my local bus stop and I happened to play with some of the seed pods while waiting for a bus one day. I ended up looking like the elephant man for a few days, and it took a bit of time to figure out what was going on.
It turns out that Urushiol shows up in some surprising places, including mango skin, which I discovered later in life after peeling a bunch of mangoes to make a mango salad. Apparently the husks of cashew nuts are notoriously bad for the workers who deal with them too (although the nuts themselves are perfectly safe)..
I don't think I'm likely to deliberately eat anything with urushiol in it, but I must admit, the idea of being able to train my immune system to deal with it is kind of appealing.
I didn't know one could eat Solanums. I was always under the impression that nightshade (and the foliage of most members of the Solanaceae family) were just about all poisonous to some extent.
From Wikipedia:
"The species most commonly called nightshade in North America and Britain is Solanum dulcamara, also called bittersweet or woody nightshade. Its foliage and egg-shaped red berries are poisonous, the active principle being solanine, which can cause convulsions and death if taken in large doses. The black nightshade (S. nigrum) is also generally considered poisonous, but its fully ripened fruit and foliage are cooked and eaten in some areas."
This family also contains a fair amount of psychoactive members most of which are also poisonous at the right dose. (Tobacco and Jimson Weed for instance and in fact some Solanums...http://sarahannelawless.com/2010/05/10/solanum/ ).
But.. there is nightshade, for sale in the market in the picture. My world view on Solanums has been shattered.
When we cleaned up our diets and got chemical based products out of our house, we switched to Hemp based cleaning and body products, her Lupus and RA symptoms went away and never returned.
Common Nightshades are:
Potatoes Tomatoes Eggplant Peppers (including bell, cayenne pepper, and paprika). Gojo berries are also Nightshades, they are not a 'superfood'.
The list is far longer than just those common ones.
We are what we absorb from all sources.
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