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Nightshades and Arthritis Someone named Garrett Smith has written a few articles on the dangers of all nightshades. Perhaps more tellingly, there's actually an "Arthritis Nightshades Research Foundation" which has been around for a while. A lot of people seem to think nightshades - including potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, and all types of peppers except peppercorns - cause some forms of arthritis and other bone and joint problems, and that cutting them out will help. However, the story is not completely clear. Some people seem to think this is more an issue of extremes in acid/base balance than nightshades directly. Nightshades are alkaline (?) and tend to make the body expel calcium and related minerals to compensate; this may be a cause of kidney stones (?). |
Personal experience 200807-8 A month or two ago, I noticed that the farthest joints in my index fingers were starting to feel arthritic when carrying groceries or handling one gallon water bottles. I'm 48, and I'm a computer programmer, so I type all the time and the index fingers do twice the work of the other fingers; I figured it was a wear and tear issue and changed my carrying habits to use the other fingers more. A few weeks ago, the index fingers got better. But now, I'm wondering if I was also changing my nightshade consumption patterns too, and just not noticing the correlation. |
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Adult Lactose Tolerance Four different mutations for adult lactase persistence have been identified, one that seems to have originated in northern Europe (C/T-13910) and and three in Africa (G/C-14010, T/G-13915 and C/G-13907). The mutations are all in the same general area, ranging from 13807 to 14010 base pairs upstream of the gene for lactase - quite close, given that chromosome has millions of base pairs. That suggests that the chromosomal region they occur in functions to turn off the lactase gene in adulthood, and that perhaps any mutation in that area will allow lactase persistence into adulthood. Aside from northern Europe and east Africa, the areas with significant lactase persistent populations are the middle east and India. One of the east African mutations could have spread to the middle east, or it could again have originated independently; most of the population of India is descended from caucasian immigrants from their west within the last few thousand years, so again they might have gotten lactase persistence from migration or from another independent mutation. Hopefully someone will do genetic studies of those populations at some point; they might shed further light on prehistoric migration patterns. |
There seems to be some individual variation, and even variations within an individual. If I haven't had any dairy for a long while, I can get away with a little, but if I start having it regularly, I go back to being extremely intolerant. I would guess that has to do with the population of intestinal bacterial fauna; probably the gut bacteria that convert lactose to gas tend to die off over time when I don't have any dairy, and of course they proliferate when I have a lot. There's also some question as to how lactase production first switches off in people who aren't lactase persistent. I personally don't remember any symptoms of lactose intolerance before college, though in other mammals it switches off when weaning. During college, I had very little dairy, and it was when I went back to breakfast cereal with milk afterwards that I started having the bad symptoms. Perhaps it switches off when one first stops having milk regularly. Also, some people who are heterozygous for adult lactase persistence - have the mutation on only one of the chromosome pair - apparently have low levels of symptoms, even though they are not fully lactose intolerant. |