An interesting thing about black nightshade is that it appears to come up
from a perennial root. Another member of the family, horse or Carolina
nettle, does the same. That one is where they got scopalomine, used for
"twilight sleep." This drug was used on women in labor, while it does
nothing to reduce pain, it causes amnesia afterward so the person can't
remember it. Strange, eh? Not necessarily the best sort of high for high
school kids either. And jimson weed, THAT's the one that most often gets
used by rural kids. It's not good for you. Occasional deaths. I think
it's the arthritis in cattle from eating jimson weed that led to the
no-solanine diet for arthritis. At least in some people, solanine can
convert stored vitamin D to the active form, causing overgrowth at the ends
of the bones. Copper prevents this, hence the copper bracelet for
arthritis. In all my years as a massage therapist I have seen a few people
wearing copper bracelets, but the one person I have met who absolutely
swears by his is a roofer. He gets LOTS of vitamin D. There is a "Marshall
Protocol" for lupus, sarcoidosis and possibly other autoimmune diseases
based on the notion that some micro organisms can do the same thing to
vitamin D, enabling them to enter the white blood cells and cause trouble.
The first thing they do on this protocol is eliminate all sources of vitamin
D, including sunshine exposure. They wait till infected WBC's have had time
to die (about 4 months) and then take low doses of antibiotics to kill the
rest. It's the only thing they have found that works on sarcoidosis. And
on top of this, a friend who worked in an immunology lab told me that they
knew there were some people who were immune to AIDS. What they had in
common was a mutation to do with vitamin D receptors. Food for thought.....
Donna