Apple seeds and cyanide

True: I was living in Southern UK by this point. I had never seen a pineapple until I came to NAmerica and remember seeing my first banana. I would guess our peaches came from Europe.

I wonder also if the body gets used to certain toxins. I always ate my apple and pear cores.

I accidentally ate a piece of cheese in the dark 2 weeks ago that I saw in the morning was liberally coated in blue mold. Normally I cut mold off my own cheese before it gets too white, so my system recognized it right away and flushed me out starting 30 min later and 45 minutes after that I was done flushing, no cramps, all done. I am thinking perhaps the system builds up a tolerance somewhat. We were kids: we would fight over nuts and peach "nuts" while our parents slept, (we did a lot of things before our parents were up, and lived in the country) and these "nuts" were sweeter than walnuts.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Standing back a little, I wonder if there are are regional differences (soil chemistry, climate, soil biota) and differing varieties of fruit trees that could lead to very different concentrations of cyanide in the seeds.

The challenge with this forum is that it spans many continents. Things that are true in one climate and ecosystem do not necessarily apply in other places.

Having had time to process this and mulling over sweet almond/bitter almond, wondering  if a sweeter peach exists and reading more about what Joseph Lofthouse has to say on other posts, and in his Landrace book I am reading a hard copy of, my peaches from Europe were almost undoubtedly another kind of peach, or even a cross.

So a peach is not necessarily a peach
Or a plum a plum
They could be pleaches and pums!

I have learned a lot this past 2 days

I actually did a presentation on this in my bio chemistry course at chiropractic school. A lot of good points have been made about the amounts of cyanide and amygdalin and I also very much enjoyed the post going over the active enzymes. One other thing to keep in mind is that the enzyme that breaks down amygdalin acts much more slowly than the enzyme that breaks down cyanide. So not only does a very large amount need to be eaten to overwhelm the detoxification but it must be done over a short time. Additionally cyanide is toxic because it prevents hemoglobin from transporting oxygen. It may have some other toxic effects on cancer cells but the one that is a problem for the whole body is the inability to get oxygen to the tissues.