Night Shades

[Lisa]

What specifically are nighshades that I hear about all the time. It woud help me as well as others.

Lisa

[Green12]

What specifically are nighshades that I hear about all the time. It woud help me as well as others.

Lisa

As far as I understand, nightshades are a group of foods from the same family that include potato, tomato, eggplant, bell peppers and tobacco. Some people with arthritis notice improvements when they avoid this family of foods.

[Ursa Major]

I agree with Julie, except for one point: It's not just bell peppers, but ALL peppers (green, red, orange, yellow, those hot, spicy ones, even paprika needs to be avoided).

And they don't just cause things like arthritis. Potatoes cause gastrointestinal problems for me (bloating, gas, diarrhea, which will burn my skin badly), tomatoes cause migraines for me (I used to have migraines lasting two weeks in the summer, because I'd eat tomatoes every day!), peppers cause outbreaks of big, ugly pus-filled pimples all over my nose and chin. Don't know about eggplant, since I never liked them anyway, and since tobacco smoke is one of my worst allergies (it gives me severe asthma), I've always tried to stay away from it, since I moved away from home (my father smoked two packs a day).

For me they are a worse problem than most people who are intolerant to them, because they also contain high levels of lectins and salicylates.

[BRUMI1968]

Another problem with nightshades is that they require calcium to be digestd. This means that if you have not eaten calcium rich foods with the nightshade, it will leech calcium from your bones. This is important for vegans to understand, so they don't lose more bone mass - and many celiacs have osteopenia or osteoperosis too, so leeching anything out of the bones is a bad idea.

I quit eating potatoes because they were giving me all sorts of pooping problems, from one end of the spectrum to the other...and it worked. I got better.

IMPORTANT NOTE: sweet potatoes and yams are NOT nightshades; they belong to the marigold family. Yum!

And black pepper, the spice (and white pepper and green pepper corns) are not nightshades - they are a flower or seed from an entirely different plant.

[Ursa Major]

IMPORTANT NOTE: sweet potatoes and yams are NOT nightshades; they belong to the marigold family. Yum!

And black pepper, the spice (and white pepper and green pepper corns) are not nightshades - they are a flower or seed from an entirely different plant.

Those are good points, thanks for pointing these out, I forgot about them.

[ms-sillyak-screwed]

!