Nightshades Curb Your Enthusiasm

[Disclaimer: The following is not a medical article]

I am a male over 60 and have [or had] a serious health problem that I tried to ignore for the last three years. I tried every holistic treatment, supplement, vitamin and herb under the sun. During that period my gastrointestinal tract quit working three times. I had a lot of trouble breathing and although I had the urge nothing would come out of my body. You get the picture.

Since I consider the hospital a dangerous place I refused to go to the Emergency Room. Not only do I avoid the Hospital like the plague I don’t go to doctors. When I was a kid, before modern medicine and “specialists,” our doctor, Abe Greenberg, carried a black bag and took an oath, Primum non nocere, “First, do no harm”). Doctor Greenberg in 1950, 10 years before iatrogenic disease became a reality [Appendix A], had this to say about the sick:

• 95% of the people who are sick will get better by themselves.
• 2.5% will get better with very little help.
• The rest you can’t help anyway so leave them alone.

For Dr. Greenberg to be “politically and medically correct” he would have said:

The story of how Nightshades, shellfish, gluten and carbonated drinks almost killed me is coming soon. In the meantime why not try a diet without Nightshades; what do you have to lose? [3]

Click here to read All about nightshades: explore the hidden hazards of your favorite food with macrobiotic nutritionist Lino Stanchich

Click here to read more about people who are sensitive to nightshade plants.

P.S. Yes someone wrote the 4 myths about nightshade vegetables. Feel free to read Rhea Seymour’s dietary disinformation but make sure you check out the comments.

John Roth email: jrothseven@gmail.com

Footnotes

[1] EXCEPTIONS: Sweet Potatoes (high in Vitamin A), and Yams (not high in Vitamin A), and Black and white pepper do not fall into this category. Avocados are also OK (in fact, Avocados are high in essential, preferred amino acids, and healthy fats). I have found spicy tasty “Miso” (soy) products without nightshade.

[2] Disclaimer: According to the Mayo Clinic, allergy to Nightshade vegetables is uncommon. Obviously not everyone is sensitive to the alkaloid compounds in the nightshade family of plants. Why not try a diet without Nightshades and see if your overall health improves.

Nightshades: Tomatoes, white [and red] potatoes, red, yellow, cherry and green bell peppers, the “hot” peppers such as chili and Paprika, Cayenne pepper (capsicum), Pimento, Chili peppers, Hot peppers (long & red, red cluster) as well as eggplant belong to the Nightshade Family, a botanical genus called Solanaceae species. This species also includes tobacco, poisonous belladonna, and the toxic plants henbane, mandrake, and jimson weeds.

[3] I started eating a diet without Nightshades the afternoon of 2/12/2012. 2/14/2012 was the first night I realized my nocturia (the need to urinate frequently) had gone away.

Reprinted with permission from The Peoples Voice.