Peppers and Parkinson’s: The Benefits of Smoking Without the Risks?
Parkinson’s disease is a movement disorder
striking 1% of our older population
and is the 14th leading cause of death in the United States.
We don’t really know what causes it,
but we do know that people with a smoking history
only appear to have about half the risk.
Of course smoking is hugely damaging to health;
any benefit derived from a reduction in risk
of Parkinson’s is far outweighed
by the increased risks of cancer, heart, and lung disease,
but this shouldn’t stop us from evaluating tobacco components
for possible neuroprotective effects,
and nicotine may fit the bill.
If nicotine is the agent responsible
for the neuroprotective effects,
is there anyway to get the benefit without the risks?
Well where does nicotine come from?
The tobacco plant.
Any other plants have nicotine?
Well tobacco is a nightshade— that means tobacco, tomatoes,
potatoes, eggplants, and peppers
are all in the same family.
And guess what?
They all contain nicotine as well.
That's why you can’t tell if someone’s a smoker
just by looking for the presence of nicotine
in their toenail clippings,
because non-smokers grow out some nicotine
into their nails as well.
It’s in our daily diet, but how much?
The amount we average in our diet is hundreds of times
less than we get from a single cigarette,
so though we’ve known for 15 years
that there’s nicotine in ketchup,
it was dismissed as insignificant.
But then we learned that even just one or two puffs
of a cigarette could saturate
half of our brain’s nicotine receptors,
so it doesn’t take much.
And then we learned that even just exposure
to second-hand smoke may lower the risk of Parkinson’s,
and there’s not much nicotine in that.
In fact one would only be exposed to like 3 micrograms of nicotine
working in some smoky restaurant,
but that’s on the same order
as what one might get eating food at a non-smoking restaurant.
So the contribution of dietary nicotine
intake just eating some healthy vegetables may be significant.
So researchers decided to put it to the test.
Looking at nightshade consumption, in general,
they maybe found a lower risk compared to other vegetables,
but different nightshades have different amounts of nicotine.
They found none in eggplant, only a little in potatoes,
some in tomatoes, but the most in bell peppers,
and so when that was taken in account,
a much stronger picture emerged.
They found that more peppers, meant more protection,
and as we might expect, the effects of eating nicotine-containing foods
was mainly evident in nonsmokers,
as the nicotine from smoke would presumably blot out any dietary effect.
So this could explain why protective associations
have been found for Parkinson’s
and the consumption of tomatoes, potatoes, and a tomato
and pepper-rich Mediterranean diet.
Might nightshade vegetables also help with treating Parkinson’s?
Well, results from trials of nicotine gum and patches has been patchy.
So maybe nicotine only helps prevent it in the first place,
or maybe it’s not the nicotine at all,
but some other phytochemical in tobacco and pepper family?
They conclude that their findings will need to be
reproduced to help establish cause and effect
before considering dietary interventions to prevent Parkinson’s disease,
but when the dietary intervention
is like eat more yummy, healthy dishes like stuffed peppers with tomato sauce,
I don’t see the reason we have to wait.