Background and Purpose: Cucumber, fish meat and some other foods have been mentioned as "cold" foods in Canon, a traditional medicine book written by Avicenna.  A "cold" food induces coldness in the body, this definition of cold foods and abstinence of them has been recommended to epileptic patients in this book. Here we show the effects of cucumber (cucumis sativus L.) and fish (strongylure leiura), as two "cold" foods, on the maximal electroshockseizure threshold in mice.

Methods & Materials:This study was carried out on 23 locally bred white male mice, 25-35 g and aged 30-40 days. They were randomly assigned into three treatments, including water, fish meat and cucumber. All the test materials were administered by gavages (1ml/mice/day, 3 days). The Means of the thresholds for HLTE were compared using one-way analysis of variance followed by post hoc dunnett’s test.

Results: The means of the thresholds for maximal seizure (i.e., HLTE) were lower in the test groups (C.sativus, 21 mA and S. leiura, 32 mA vs. 91 mA in the control group).

Conclusion: C. sativus and S. leiura significantly decreased the threshold of HLTE compared to the control group.Based on the findings of this research, caution should be taken when epileptic patients use C.sativus and S.leiura.