Nicotine in Nightshade Vegetables and Parkinson's Disease

Dr. Ardis on Nicotine as a Food Nutrient
Which Foods Contain Nicotine
The University of Washington Study
How Nicotine May Protect Dopamine Neurons
The SV2C Gene
What the Article Reports About Patches
Eating the Nightshades
Dr. Ardis’s Wider Claims
Dr. Ardis’s Own Work
Key Research Papers
Connections
Featured Videos

1. Dr. Ardis on Nicotine as a Food Nutrient

Dr. Bryan Ardis does not treat nicotine as something that belongs only to tobacco. He describes it as part of ordinary food. In his words:

“Nicotine is not a chemical. It’s actually a nutrient found in foods like nightshade vegetables, like potatoes and tomatoes.”

Besides potatoes and tomatoes, he names peppers, paprika, ketchup and eggplant. He also says: “Nicotine is four times more anti-inflammatory than it is inflammatory.”

His Parkinson’s statement

Dr. Ardis lists Parkinson’s disease among the conditions he says nicotine helps. He tells of a husband with Parkinson’s who began chewing nicotine gum. As he puts it, “within two weeks of chewing nicotine gum, their husband’s Parkinson’s symptoms for six to 10 years completely disappeared.”

The sections below set his food-nicotine idea beside the research on nightshade vegetables and Parkinson’s. His wider claims, and his own sources, close the page.

2. Which Foods Contain Nicotine

The foods Dr. Ardis names come from one plant family, the nightshades, which botanists call Solanaceae. Tobacco belongs to the same family, and some of its edible relatives contain nicotine too.

The everyday nightshade foods are:

Tomatoes — fresh, cooked or as juice. Ketchup is made from them.
Potatoes — baked, boiled, roasted or mashed.
Peppers — sweet and hot. Paprika is ground from dried peppers.
Eggplant — also called aubergine.

In 1993, Domino and colleagues measured the nicotine content of common vegetables, including tomatoes, potatoes and eggplant, and reported it in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study in the next section went a step further: it weighted each food by its nicotine concentration.

3. The University of Washington Study

Fresh bell peppers in a wooden crate at a market — Peppers showed the strongest pattern in the University of Washington study.

The study at the centre of this topic came from researchers at the University of Washington, led by Searles Nielsen. It was published in 2013 in the Annals of Neurology as “Nicotine from edible Solanaceae and risk of Parkinson disease.”

Who took part

490 people newly diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease between 1992 and 2008.
644 people without Parkinson’s, as a comparison group (the “controls”).

What they were asked

The researchers asked how often people ate peppers, tomatoes, tomato juice and potatoes, and how often they ate other vegetables, for comparison. They also took each person’s tobacco history into account.

What they found

People who ate the edible nightshades more often were less likely to have Parkinson’s. The paper gives a relative risk of 0.81 for each extra time per day these foods were eaten.
Other vegetables showed no link: their relative risk was 1.00.
The pattern grew stronger when each food was weighted by its nicotine concentration.
Peppers showed the strongest link.
The link was seen mostly in people who had never used tobacco, or who had smoked for less than 10 years.

A relative risk compares two groups. A value of 1.00 means no difference; a value below 1.00 means lower risk.

The lead author is quoted in Medical News Today: “Our study is the first to investigate dietary nicotine and risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.”

The authors’ own conclusion reads: “Dietary nicotine or other constituents of tobacco and peppers may reduce PD risk.” (PD stands for Parkinson’s disease.) They add that the finding needs confirmation.

4. How Nicotine May Protect Dopamine Neurons

Glowing dopamine neuron with vesicles travelling along its fibres — A dopamine neuron — the cell type a 2016 laboratory study found nicotine helped protect from misfolded-protein stress.

Medical News Today explains Parkinson’s disease in a few plain steps:

The effects of the disease come from the loss of brain cells (neurons) that make dopamine, a chemical messenger.
Some proteins inside cells fold into the wrong shape. In Parkinson’s, the body seemingly does not clear these misfolded proteins away; they build up inside cells and eventually kill them.
There is no cure. Treatment and medicines ease some of the symptoms.

The 2016 Journal of Neuroscience study

A 2016 study by Srinivasan and colleagues looked at what nicotine does inside dopamine neurons under that kind of stress. Its title states the result: a “smoking-relevant nicotine concentration attenuates the unfolded protein response in dopaminergic neurons.”

The “unfolded protein response” is the cell’s alarm system for proteins that have folded wrongly, and “attenuates” means it was turned down. Medical News Today sums up the finding: when the conditions that make proteins misfold were recreated, the dopamine neurons were more resistant to the toxic effects of those proteins when nicotine was present.

For how dopamine works as a messenger, see the site’s animation Dopamine, Reward & How Habits Hijack You. The condition itself is covered on the Parkinson’s Disease page.

5. The SV2C Gene

Medical News Today also reports genetic work from 2015 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). The geneticists set out to map the genetic mechanisms that might lie behind the link between nicotine exposure and a lower risk of Parkinson’s.

They identified a gene, SV2C, that may play a role in the lower risk seen in regular smokers.
SV2C makes a protein for synaptic vesicles in the substantia nigra, the part of the brain that Parkinson’s damages. Synaptic vesicles are the tiny sacs in which nerve cells store chemical messengers.
According to the article, the authors call the gene “biologically plausible” because nicotine enhances the release of dopamine through these vesicles.

6. What the Article Reports About Patches

The same article also covers nicotine given through a skin patch.

It reports that in late 2018 a randomized controlled trial found that nicotine patches did not slow Parkinson’s; the trial was published in 2023 by Oertel and colleagues in NEJM Evidence.
It also reports the conclusion of a Parkinson’s research foundation that nicotine is not a clinically useful intervention for Parkinson’s.

7. Eating the Nightshades

Roasted peppers, tomatoes, eggplant and potatoes in a cast-iron pan — Everyday whole foods from the nightshade family, roasted together.

The University of Washington study was about food, not supplements: it asked how often people ate ordinary vegetables. Peppers, tomatoes, potatoes and eggplant are everyday whole foods, easy to eat often and in many ways.

Food	Family	How people commonly eat it
Tomatoes	Nightshade (Solanaceae)	Raw in salads, cooked into sauces and soups, or as tomato juice
Potatoes	Nightshade (Solanaceae)	Baked, boiled, roasted or mashed
Peppers, sweet and hot	Nightshade (Solanaceae)	Raw, roasted, stuffed or stir-fried; dried and ground as paprika
Eggplant	Nightshade (Solanaceae)	Roasted, grilled, baked or stewed

Whole foods are this site’s standing preference: the vegetables themselves, cooked at home, rather than processed products built from them. This page gives no nicotine amounts and makes no promise about what eating these foods will do for any one person.

The site covers two of these foods in depth, including notes for people who avoid nightshades: Tomatoes and Bell Peppers.

8. Dr. Ardis’s Wider Claims: Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and MS

Parkinson’s is one entry on a longer list. Dr. Ardis names several conditions of the brain and nerves that he says nicotine helps:

Parkinson’s disease — the nicotine-gum account in section 1, in which a husband’s symptoms of six to 10 years “completely disappeared” within two weeks.
Alzheimer’s disease — he says nicotine is “known to cure, reverse, and prevent” it.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) — also on his list.

His list goes further: ulcerative colitis, arthritis (“every known arthritis is benefited with nicotine”), long COVID, vaccine injury, viral myocarditis, brain fog, migraine, depression and mood, and appetite and weight.

His protocol

Dr. Ardis recommends nicotine patches and organic, additive-free tobacco. He does not recommend vaping, because of its flavouring chemicals; the Pyrazines and Nicotine Addiction page covers his view of tobacco additives.

His full protocol — patches and gum, the doses he uses and how he starts people who are new to nicotine — is documented on the Nicotine Patch Protocol page, together with the site’s safety notes.

On who should not use it, he says: “Those who have seizures… You should not take nicotine. It’s on the box.”
Used and unused patches are poisonous to children and pets.

Dr. Ardis’s Own Work

The Dr. Ardis Show — official site: thedrardisshow.com
The Dr. Ardis Show, 28 August 2023 — “Venom Industrial Complex: Weaponizing Venoms”: episode page
The Dr. Ardis Show podcast archive, April 2024, with his nicotine presentation “The Other ‘N’ Word”: April 2024 archive
Myers Detox Podcast #607, “Nicotine Can Reverse Brain Fog, Inflammation, Dementia, and Chronic Illness” with Dr. Bryan Ardis: episode page · transcript
Cosmic Reality Podcast, May 2024 — “Dr. Ardis on Nicotine, Snake Venom & Bible Messaging”: episode page
Book: Bryan Ardis, Moving Beyond the COVID-19 Lies: Restoring Health & Hope for Humanity (Harvest Creek Publishing, 2024; ISBN 978-1-961641-22-8): library record · the site’s book page
His nicotine protocols as documented by a reader site: nicotine patch protocol

Back to Table of Contents

Key Research Papers

Searles Nielsen S, Franklin GM, Longstreth WT, Swanson PD, Checkoway H (2013). Nicotine from edible Solanaceae and risk of Parkinson disease. Annals of Neurology. 74(3):472-477. — PubMed PMID: 23661325
Domino EF, Hornbach E, Demana T (1993). The nicotine content of common vegetables. New England Journal of Medicine. 329(6):437. — PubMed PMID: 8326992
Srinivasan R, Henley BM, Henderson BJ, et al. (2016). Smoking-relevant nicotine concentration attenuates the unfolded protein response in dopaminergic neurons. Journal of Neuroscience. 36(1):65-79. — PubMed PMID: 26740650
Oertel WH, Müller HH, Unger MM, et al. (2023). Transdermal nicotine treatment and progression of early Parkinson’s disease. NEJM Evidence. 2(9):EVIDoa2200311. — PubMed PMID: 38320207

News Coverage

Nordqvist J; medically reviewed by Seunggu Han, MD (updated 27 February 2019). Dietary nicotine and Parkinson’s disease: Evidence and relationship. Medical News Today. — medicalnewstoday.com/articles/260354