Solanine poisoning

My daughter-in-law is also allergic to mango, she is unable to touch the fruit without an anaphylactic allergic reaction. Unfortunately their home in home In Florida has a huge and beautiful mango tree next to the driveway. 🤨

@callalloo - my daughter has an anaphylactic allergy to mangoes too, in addition to several other fruits. As for strawberries, kiwi and pineapple … she even cannot be in the same room where those are being served.

When the wonderful Fairchild Tropical Gardens holds their annual Mango Festival, they have medical staff scattered around and an ambulance on standy. I was allergic to strawberries as a child but grew out of it. Kiwis are a new one on me but allergies and sensitivities can pop up anytime over just about anything. A friend's life was saved by an Epi-pen when a waiter in a restaurant failed to disclose cashews in an entree's sauce.

I love tomatoes. I have an awful Solanine allergy which results in inflammation and joint pain.

Hello @aco990, Welcome to Connect. I love tomatoes too but I don't have a Solanine allergy. I do try to limit them along with most nightshades to hopefully help with inflammation and joint pain. Do you try and limit the amount of nightshades or have you been able to eliminate them all together?

Well right now I’m avoiding them all. When I’m not hurting I sneak in a tomato or two. Eggplants are the worst for me.

By reading these posts, I have learned so much. I had never heard of any downside to some vegetables. It goes to show not everything is good for everyone. And just how important it is to know your own body and what works for you.

I also experience joint pain from Solanine containing plants, which I was surprised to find out includes other plants including fruit like blueberries. Blueberries cause swelling and pain in my fingers. I found out that I have a gene variant for the gene MTHFR which is involved in processing vitamin B9. Sensitivity to solanine is one aspect of having the homozygous form of MTHFR C677T. This variant is also associated with other symptoms including depression, anxiety and high homocysteine levels which can increase the risk of heart problems. It can be tested for with a simple blood test. I tested this effect by eating a bowl of cherry tomatoes I grew organically at home, and they left me feeling stiff and with joint pain for three days. I avoid the solanine family and blueberries now.

I too have a negative response to solanine and/or chaconine. I can ignore the mild joint pain, and mild neuropathy in my fingertips and tips of toes, but the insane depression with suicidal ideation is a little much. The symptoms follow the biological half lives and fade to tolerable after 3 days, and completely disappear after 6 days.

After numerous doctor visits, I gave up on getting help for years. I think Kaiser labelled my account as a hypochondriac because they were no help at all.

Now that I've had some time to think about it, I believe the issue is enzymes. These two glycoalkaloids when ingested illicit an enzyme response. The body sees a known biological toxin, and creates enzymes to break it down. The problems arise when you overcome your ability to create the breakdown enzymes.

It could be that you are just a little slow in making the enzymes required to break down the toxins, and you'll have to avoid solanine and chaconine.

Another possibility is that you are not getting enough of the nutrients and/or vitamins required to create the enzymes. As nann18 pointed out above, the MTHFR gene would be a likely culpret but it isn't so simple as a blood test. There are 34 mutations that limit the conversions, and the MTHFR mutation is just one of the worse.

Since it is enzymes, I believe, that are the issue - to my limited knowledge, Vitamin B6 and magnesium are the mostly likely culpret building blocks that would limit enzyme creation.

I started taking a multivitamin with the active forms of B12 and folate (methylcobalamine and methylfolate) to cover the unknown issue of a possible MTHFR relative. I later added the active form of B6 (P5P) and a bioavailable form of magnesium (magnesium glycinate).

The MTHFR multivitamin greatly reduced the depression, and reduced the intensity of the neuropathy. I was already taking a cheap form of B6, but the active form (P5P) stopped the neuropathy completely. I didn't notice any effect of the magnesium glycinate, but since it is required for so many enzymes I won't stop taking it.

I think that the mechanism of action is mostly in the B6 since it is also required to make dopamine. My body seemingly does not convert the cheap vitamin form of B6 into the active form for one, and then dumps all of my B6 into creating the breakdown enzyme(s) leaving me with little to none for dopamine creation and nerve health. I do get arthritis symptoms also, but I've worked construction so much in my life that I can't point my finger at solanine.

I stopped eating potatoes, since they have a large mass and therefore contain quite a lot of the glycoalkaloids per serving. In tomatoes, the problem glycoalkaloids are converted to tomatine when vine ripened. I wouldn't trust canned tomatoes, and store bought tomatoes are green when picked. Chili peppers are the only nightshade I'll use now since we don't normally ingest large masses of them, and they give so much flavor from so little.

I hope this rant helps a little since I couldn't find help when I needed it the most.

I am curious I did ingest black nightshade ( thinking the green ones would ripen on the shelf like tomatoes) . They did seem bitter though and I got a mild stomach ache. Never do this I had been eating the black ripened naturally ones ;they tasted good lol no effect. ( I thought) Maybe ate over a few weeks several at a time maybe once or twice a week, like a few yrs.ago. So later… I have chronic anemia ( no cause as of yet known) . You with what you said probably don’t think this is connected, but I wonder.