Category Archives: Allergy & Food Sensitivity

What’s the Trouble With Sweet Potatoes?

Posted by on January 11, 2011 166 comments

We’re continuing with a series on people who have reported something going wrong when they tested some variation of the Perfect Health Diet. (The first post summarized experiences, good and bad; the second looked at difficulties suddenly adding carbohydrates to a very low-carb diet.)

The next issue was reported by Chris Masterjohn; he had trouble with sweet potatoes:

Although sweet potatoes are considered a safe starch on the Perfect Health Diet, they are not very safe for me. When I discovered how yummy sweet potato fries are, I started eating several sweet potatoes per day. Within a few days, I was limping and my neck was stiff. By the end of the week, my limp was extreme. I looked online to see if I was eating anything high in oxalates, and sure enough, sweet potatoes are loaded with them. My symptoms dramatically improved after one day off sweet potatoes and were gone the second day.

Chris’s commenter Lisa also had trouble with sweet potatoes:

I’ve been very achy since I started eating sweet potatoes daily. Why would some of us be maladapted to oxalates?… I’m wondering if after a long stint of LC/paleo eating I’ve become intolerant to oxalates or to starch in general.

Clearly sweet potatoes are not safe for everyone. What might be causing the trouble?

Fructose and Fiber as Possible Confounders

One factor to consider is that there are different varieties of sweet potato. We eat an Asian sweet potato variety which is not nearly as sweet as conventional American sweet potatoes; it has a yellow flesh and a chestnut flavor. It is botanically a yam, not a sweet potato. It looks like this (via “my super sweet twenty-six”):

Like so many modern foods, the standard American sweet potato has been bred for sweetness. Here is data from http://nutritiondata.com comparing 100 g of potatoes, yams, sweet potatoes, and grapes for sugar, starch, and fiber content:

Food Sugar (g) Starch (g) Fiber (g)
Potato 1.2 17.3 2.2
Yam 0.5 23.1 3.9
Sweet potato 6.5 7.5 3.3
Grapes 15.5 0.0 0.9

All have similar calories. Yams are largely sugar-free, but sweet potatoes are intermediate between grapes and potatoes in both sugar and starch content. They are sort of half fruit, half starch.

Thus, it is conceivable that sweet potatoes could trigger an issue like fructose malabsorption; or that fructose or fiber might feed certain gut infections that would not be similarly fed by potatoes.

Oxalate

Chris believed his problem was due to oxalate. Sweet potatoes do contain oxalate, although they are not the only plant foods which do.

In fact, by far the largest source of oxalate in the American diet is spinach. Spinach by itself accounts for over 40% of all oxalate consumed by Americans; potatoes for about 10%. [1] Wheat bran has high levels of oxalate.

Why are oxalates troublesome?  Some people have sensitivities to oxalate. Rarely, genetic defects in the enzymes that degrade oxalate cause a disease called primary hyperoxaluria; this disease afflicts 1 to 3 people in a million.  Other conditions can elevate calcium or oxalate in the urine and increase the risk of calcium oxalate kidney stones. This is especially likely in people who are deficient in magnesium or who don’t eat citrate. [2]

Another pathway by which oxalate might cause trouble is via fungal infections. Candida and other fungi form calcium oxalate crystals in tissue [3,4]; fungi appear to be responsible for the yellow-brown calcium oxalate biofilms which form on stone monuments. [5]

But the literature suggests that oxalate sensitivities are rare. If oxalate sensitivity is present, then it should manifest itself when eating spinach, wheat bran, and other oxalate rich foods. Since Chris has praised spinach and wheat recently, I wonder if it is really the oxalate that caused his trouble.

Phytoalexins

Another possibility is a class of toxins called phytoalexins.

Ordinarily, sweet potatoes are largely toxin free. But when attacked by fungus or molds, sweet potatoes generate a variety of food toxins. As two papers describe them:

Sweet potatoes contain phytoalexins that can cause lung edema and are hepatotoxic to mice. At least one of these, 4-ipomeanol, can cause extensive lung clara cell necrosis and can increase the severity of pneumonia in mice. Some phytoalexins in sweet potatoes are hepatotoxic and nephrotoxic to mice. [6]

Ipomeanine (IPN), 4-ipomeanol (4-IPO), 1-ipomeanol (1-IPO), and 1,4-ipomeadiol (DIOL) are toxic 3-substituted furans found in mold-damaged sweet potatoes. IPN and 4-IPO are the most toxic, but all produce pulmonary toxicity in cattle and rodents, and 4-IPO induces hepatotoxicity in humans. [7]

Cattle will die if fed mold-damaged sweetpotatoes:

Unfortunate bovine fatalities occurring after ingestion of mold-damaged sweetpotatoes preclude the use of the culled tubers in livestock feed. In cattle, mold-damaged sweetpotatoes induce an acute respiratory distress syndrome resulting in asphyxiation. [8]

Toxins may be present even if mold damage is not visible:

Fermentation of 6 weeks duration was observed to inadequately eliminate the lung, liver, and kidney toxicity caused by mold-damaged sweetpotatoes. In fact, fermentation exacerbated the hepatotoxicity of mold-damaged sweetpotatoes. This is also the first demonstration that sweetpotato regions lacking visible mold damage can induce lung and kidney injury … [8]

Allergies

Sweet potatoes are generally considered to be one of the least allergenic of foods. However, infants sometimes do have sensitivities to sweet potato. This may reflect an immature gut flora in the infants; perhaps specific bacterial species — possibly including the oxalate-digesting Oxalobacter [9] — make sweet potatoes tolerable? If so, it raises the possibility that adults with incomplete gut flora might also have sweet potato sensitivities.

There is also the possibility of allergies to mold toxins in infected sweet potatoes.

Food Sensitivities as a Diagnostic Tool

Food sensitivities can sometimes be helpful in diagnosing certain health conditions:

  • Leaky gut. People with a leaky gut will have many food sensitivities; people with a healthy gut will have few.
  • Small bowel infections. People with infections of the small intestine will usually have a negative reaction to fructose.
  • Colonic infections. People with infections of the colon may react badly to fiber, and obtain relief on low-fiber diets.

There is a chance that oxalate may benefit fungal infections, so I suppose an oxalate sensitivity could be diagnostic for that, although in my experience fungal infections are usually slow-reacting to food and the response is rarely obvious.

Conclusion

In our book [p 121] we note that all plants make pesticidal toxins. Thus, no plant food can be guaranteed to be safe.

Normally, levels of pesticidal toxins are low in sweet potatoes. But it’s always desirable to inspect sweet potatoes for visible damage, and to discard any that are discolored or show other evidence of toxin production.

I confess to being puzzled as to how sweet potatoes caused Chris’s symptoms. If he tolerates spinach and wheat bran, it seems unlikely that the oxalate in sweet potatoes would be responsible. He might wish to test various foods and try to narrow down the source of his sensitivity.

For our part, we may cease listing sweet potatoes among our “safe starches” and specify yams instead, since a “safe starch” should probably be low in fructose.

References

[1] Taylor EN, Curhan GC. Oxalate intake and the risk for nephrolithiasis. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2007 Jul;18(7):2198-204. http://pmid.us/17538185.

[2] McConnell N et al. Risk factors for developing renal stones in inflammatory bowel disease. BJU Int. 2002 Jun;89(9):835-41. http://pmid.us/12010224.

[3] Takeuchi H et al. Detection by light microscopy of Candida in thin sections of bladder stone. Urology. 1989 Dec;34(6):385-7. http://pmid.us/2688263.

[4] Muntz FH. Oxalate-producing pulmonary aspergillosis in an alpaca. Vet Pathol. 1999 Nov;36(6):631-2. http://pmid.us/10568451.

[5] Pinna D. Fungal physiology and the formation of calcium oxalate films on stone monuments. Aerobiologia. 1993 9(2-3):157-167. http://www.springerlink.com/content/n72l71352t1r0r04/.

[6] Beier RC. Natural pesticides and bioactive components in foods. Rev Environ Contam Toxicol. 1990;113:47-137. http://pmid.us/2404325.

[7] Chen LJ et al. Metabolism of furans in vitro: ipomeanine and 4-ipomeanol. Chem Res Toxicol. 2006 Oct;19(10):1320-9. http://pmid.us/17040101.

[8] Thibodeau MS et al. Effect of fermentation on Sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas) toxicity in mice. J Agric Food Chem. 2004 Jan 28;52(2):380-4. http://pmid.us/14733525. B76FN5FG89GM

[9] Hatch M et al. Enteric oxalate elimination is induced and oxalate is normalized in a mouse model of Primary Hyperoxaluria following intestinal colonization with Oxalobacter. Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol. 2010 Dec 16. [Epub ahead of print]. http://pmid.us/21163900.

Why Wheat Is A Concealed Cause of Many Diseases, III: Adjuvant Activity

Posted by on November 1, 2010 34 comments

We’ve been looking into how wheat can cause autoimmune diseases other than the “classic” wheat-associated diseases, celiac disease and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.

The first post in the series discussed how wheat can cause a leaky, permeable gut that lets toxins and bacteria into the body. The second post discussed how wheat can itself generate a variety of auto-antibodies that attack nerves, brain, connective tissue and joints.

Now, we want to look at how wheat can create diseases by binding to other molecules and causing the body to form antibodies to them. Wheat can thereby cause allergies against foods as well as autoimmune attacks on self molecules.

Adjuvant Activity of Wheat Germ Agglutinin

Immunologically speaking, an “adjuvant” is a molecule that when bound to another molecule makes it much more immunogenic. Adjuvants such as aluminum salts are used in vaccines to make the immune system produce antibodies more readily against the target protein. This lowers the vaccine dose needed for immunity.

Wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) is a wheat lectin. (It is not part of gluten.) WGA can act as an adjuvant, causing the body to generate antibodies against proteins that, in isolation, the body would not form antibodies against. 

For instance, antibodies against the egg protein ovalbumin are not generated if it enters the body alone, but are generated if it is accompanied by WGA. [1]

So don’t eat toast with your eggs! If you have a leaky gut, the wheat might give you an egg allergy.

Haptenization Activity of Wheat Gliadin

A similar process that helps create auto-antibodies is “haptenization.” The immune system forms antibodies more readily against large molecules than small ones. (This helps avoid autoimmunity, since small molecules are more likely to have similar human peers.)

When two small molecules bind together, so they look like one big one, the immune system is more likely to form antibodies against the large complex. These antibodies may then react against one of the molecules individually, even if it is not paired up. If the targeted molecule is human, then the antibody is an auto-antibody.

One reason wheat gliadin is so disruptive to the body is that it binds strongly to sugars. The average molecule of wheat gliadin is bound to 1 to 2 molecules of glucose and 2 molecules of sialic acid, another sugar. [2] Since a lot of human molecules have sialic acid residues, gliadin can bind to them.

One of the sialic acid-containing molecules gliadin binds to is called GM1 ganglioside. This molecule is found on the intestinal brush border, but it is also found in nerves. When wheat binds to GM1 ganglioside on the intestinal surface, it induces the formation of auto-antibodies that attack the ganglioside in nerves. In 65% of patients with gluten sensitivity and peripheral nerve damage, anti-ganglioside antibodies are found. [2]

Conclusion

Wheat could be a concealed cause of many food allergies, through WGA’s adjuvant activity. If so, then many food allergies may gradually disappear after wheat is given up.

Wheat proteins can also bind to an extraordinarily large number of human proteins, in part by binding to sialic acid or other carbohydrate residues of glycoproteins or glycolipids, and has a chance to induce antibody formation against many of those proteins.

The bewildering array of ways in which wheat can trigger attacks on human tissue makes it impossible to identify all the wheat-caused diseases.  The only thing we can say for sure is that if you have a disease, it’s a good idea to give up wheat. You may give up your illness at the same time.

Related Posts

Other posts in this series:

  1. Wheat Is A Cause of Many Diseases, I: Leaky Gut Oct 26, 2010.
  2. Why Wheat Is A Concealed Cause of Many Diseases, II: Auto-Antibody Generation Oct 28, 2010.

References

[1] Lavelle EC et al. The identification of plant lectins with mucosal adjuvant activity. Immunology. 2001 Jan;102(1):77-86. http://pmid.us/11168640

[2] Alaedini A, Latov N. Transglutaminase-independent binding of gliadin to intestinal brush border membrane and GM1 ganglioside. J Neuroimmunol. 2006 Aug;177(1-2):167-72.  http://pmid.us/16766047.