What the heck are Nightshades, and what do they have to do with running?

What the heck are Nightshades, and what do they have to do with running?
By Tammy Cumo
 
Quick disclaimer.  I do not have a medical degree, nor a degree in nutrition.  What I do have is google, and that’s what I turned to when endless months of rest, recovery, and rehab were not making my ‘overuse’ injuries go away.  It all started last summer, three days into my taper after an almost painless marathon training cycle, IT band syndrome hit.  In the three weeks leading up to the marathon, I only ran twice, and then hobbled through the marathon.  Within weeks, bilateral foot, ankle, peroneal tendon, knee and hip pain developed.  I stopped running altogether for nearly 3 months.   Countless doctors, MRIs, X-Rays, cortisone, bloodwork, sports massage, and physical therapy.  The pain during running improved within a few months.  Running, however, triggered flare-ups of pain and inflammation a day or two later, sometimes severe enough to disrupt sleep.  Perhaps the oddest fact was there seemed to be no correlation to the length or intensity of the runs with the levels of pain and inflammation that followed.  A short easy run might send me hobbling for days whereas a long or hilly run the week before resulted in little or no pain.  Desperate for answers that the doctors couldn’t provide, I turned to google for other potential causes of pain and inflammation.  Enter, Nightshades.  Nightshades are a plant group that, according to some sources, can cause pain in inflammation in some people.  Among a long list of Nightshades are tomatoes, potatoes, all types of peppers, eggplants and others that contain certain alkaloids that have inflammation inducing properties.  They also hide in many spice blends that contain these components, such as paprika, cayenne pepper, and many Mexican spices containing hot peppers.  I started looking at my food log to see what I had eaten in the periods around some of the worst times of pain.  Tomatoes, peppers, white potatoes (hello French fries…), salsa, tomato sauce (think PIZZA!) and the list goes on.  These are common foods on my dinner plate, but they did seem to appear more frequently in the days leading up to some of these unexplained flare-ups.  Running out of options, I decided to completely eliminate the Nightshade group of foods from my diet as an experiment.  While the initial result was not complete elimination of pain, there was a significant reduction and I was able to run more and run longer, without suffering the consequences.  Is it the Nightshades or something else?   I’m only on week 3, so the jury is still out but I’m optimistic I may be on to something.  The moral of this story is don’t give up.  If you love running and something is getting in the way, keep searching.  Be your own advocate.  Think outside the box.  But remember, if you are hurting in more than a ‘I’m sore from my workout’ kind of way, see your doctor, and if you think it could be diet related, work with a nutritionist. 
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Tammy Cumo
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