Is Spicy Food Good for You?

Those who regularly eat spicy foods tend to live longer, but is it cause and effect? Here’s our first story.

Most people could name four of the basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. The rare foodie may be able to nail umami, but what about “the forgotten flavour sense,” spicy? This seeming neglect is somewhat surprising, given that hot peppers are one of the world’s most widely-used spices. In fact, as many as one in four people on the planet currently eat chilies on a daily basis, raising the question, “Why is spicy food so popular?”

Why do some like it hot, enjoying what is, at first glance, an irritating, and potentially painful mouth sensation? According to one popular suggestion, it is the endorphin hit, the release of the natural morphine-like painkiller chemicals from your brain. You hear this a lot in the popular press, but we still don’t have any convincing evidence to support it. Another suggestion is that we learned to use it for its antimicrobial properties before the age of refrigeration, given that spicy food tends to be preferred by cultures living in warmer climates, and, for that matter, maybe it makes us sweat, and thereby ultimately helps cool us down. Then again, maybe it’s just because people just like the taste.

Preference for spicy foods does seem to run in families. Based on twin studies comparing the preferences of identical to fraternal twins, genetic factors may account for up to half of the variation, similar to the heritability of sweet and sour preferences.

It may also be hormonal. Researchers in France noted that particularly males liked spicy food, and wondered if it was a testosterone thing. So, they took a group of more than 100 men, and gave them a plate of mashed potatoes and asked them to Tabasco the potatoes to taste, after taking saliva samples to measure their testosterone levels. And what do you know, men who had higher testosterone added more hot sauce. That may help explain this study that found a correlation between hot chili pepper consumption and muscle strength in adult males.

As an aside, when I was looking at the testosterone literature, I ran across this study that showed young men experience an acute decrease in blood testosterone levels after chugging sugar water or whey protein powder: 12- to 18-year-olds were randomized to a few scoops of protein power, or about two cans of soda worth of sugar, and within 20 minutes saw a significant drop in testosterone levels compared to a sugar-free, protein-free control. This is consistent with lower testosterone levels found in people on high-protein, low-carb diets.

Anyway, what does the consumption of hot spicy foods do to our lifespan? Well, a massive study of a half million men and women in China found that those regularly eating spicy foods had an associated 14% reduction in total mortality, meaning the risk of premature death. That could translate into about an extra year onto your lifespan, if it is cause-and-effect.

Those of you who follow my work know there are two main potential issues with observational studies: reverse causality and confounding factors. In other words, instead of spicy foods leading to less disease, maybe disease is leading to less spicy food, with sick people eating blander diets. However, the apparent benefit remained even after excluding sick folks, or those who were just about to croak. And so, reverse causality doesn’t seem to explain it, though hey, people who eat spicy food probably drink more. And what do they drink in China? Green tea. So, maybe that’s what going on? It would be nice to replicate this in a non-green tea drinking country, or even a country that drinks terrible stuff, like the United States. And yet same thing: a 13% reduction in premature death. And the protective association remained even after controlling for Mexican-American ethnicity. As I detailed before, they have a longevity advantage, presumably because they eat so many beans.

Same thing was found in Italy, this time a 23% lower all-cause mortality. That’s like two extra years of life. The authors conclude that minor dietary changes, such as just adding chilies to one’s usual diet, could be valuable measures for improving health.

There have been four studies done overall, including this one in Iran, that all found the same thing: significantly lower risk of premature death. In fact, black or chili pepper consumption was associated with about the same lifespan extension as turmeric, even at just like a pinch a day. And, those that did both seemed to do even better, which is consistent with the ability of a black pepper compound to boost the bioavailability of the turmeric compound curcumin. I’ve got about 50 videos on why turmeric is so good for you, but why might chili peppers extend your life? We’ll find out, next.

Four out of four studies on spicy food and mortality found a significant decrease in the risk of premature death. The intake of sweet peppers also seemed to help, but at a lesser extent. So, there may be some benefit to the spicy capsaicin compound itself.

I have a whole section on chili peppers in my Fat Burners chapter in How Not to Diet: how cayenne pepper can counteract the metabolic slowing that accompanies weight loss and accelerate fat-burning as a bonus. So, maybe the weight loss benefits account for the mortality benefits? Apparently not, since there was a mortality risk reduction with chili pepper consumption even after controlling for body mass index.

Maybe the spice was used as a replacement for salt? Anything that reduces sodium intake could improve longevity, as excess salt consumption is the deadliest dietary risk factor––the worst thing about the human diet, wiping out millions of people every year. Not only could you use the spice to replace salt, the spicy compound actually makes things taste saltier than they actually are. Sprinkling on some red pepper powder can increase your salt taste sensitivity; so, you can achieve the same salty taste with less salt. You can put people in a PET scanner and pick up differences in your secondary taste cortex, the part of your brain associated with pleasure signaling to salty foods. So, you can use hot peppers to hack your brain for your health.

And indeed, those with a high spice preference had lower salt intake and better blood pressures, and this again appears to be independent of the anti-obesity benefit of hot pepper consumption––though the lower risk of developing high blood pressure among those with higher hot pepper intake was also independent of sodium intake. So, there may be some other benefit pathways as well, like maybe it also helps your kidneys excrete more salt too––though the evidence to support this was derived from studies on mice. So, who knows?

However it works, eating spicy foods or adding supplemental spicy flavor to food by like sprinkling on cayenne pepper or hot sauce represents a novel lifestyle intervention that can reduce both salt intake and blood pressure. Even regular tabasco is pretty low in sodium, though only the original flavor. Some of their other spin-off flavors, like buffalo/habanero/chipotle, have five times more.

Now, just because all studies on spicy food and mortality to date suggest hot peppers may help you live longer doesn’t mean you can go out and eat a ghost pepper, designated the Guinness Book’s hottest pepper in the world in 2007. Here’s the peppers that may be used to measure in the hundreds of thousands of Scoville heat units. Some varieties of habanero can be 50 times as hot as jalapenos. To get to ghost peppers, though, you have to switch over to millions of units. The ghost pepper beat out the habanero in 2007, which itself got out shadowed by the Trinidad scorpion in 2011, and then 2013, burning as the reigning champ, the Carolina reaper.

But just eating a ghost pepper, which this poor guy did as part of a contest, resulted in such violent vomiting he ruptured his esophagus, which is a potentially life-threatening surgical emergency. The only thing hotter than the reaper is pure pepper spray, which can lead to such violent coughing you can rupture a lung.

Pepper spray in the eye only seems to be a problem if you can’t wash it out. This woman was pepper sprayed and handcuffed away in a cell for nine hours, and appears to have suffered permanent damage to her vision. The best thing you can do if you’re trying to help someone sprayed in the face is try to calm them down, make sure they’re breathing okay, remove their contact lenses as soon as possible, and then, abundantly irrigate their eyes to wash out the chemical.

Really abundantly, as in washing your eyes out with water or saline for a full 10-20 minutes, which is a long time to be washing your eyes out––again, after contact lenses have been removed, or, even better, not worn to an event where you might be pepper-sprayed, in the first place. Even just ambient exposure to pepper gas can cause dry eye symptoms that last for weeks, even if you’re not sprayed directly. It’s ironic that the Chemical Weapons Convention prohibits the use of these riot control agents during warfare, yet they are routinely used to quell civilian protest.

The most serious eye injuries though, are from trauma from fired projectiles like pepper balls, leading to the suggestion that protestors wear ballistic eye protection, recommending that medical centers proactively reach out to protest leaders and participants regarding appropriate safety precautions.

In terms of what you can do for pepper spray irritation on your skin, there are anecdotal reports that baby shampoo is helpful. However, as yet, there have been no published scientific studies that demonstrate their effectiveness…until now – “Baby Shampoo to Relieve the Discomfort of Tear Gas and Pepper Spray Exposure: A Randomized, Controlled Trial.” Police recruits received a burst of pepper spray to the face, then were randomized to washing off with water alone, or water and some Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo and…it didn’t work at all. How about using Maalox, or a numbing lidocaine gel, or milk? Nothing beat out plain old water. Copious water decontamination is the preferred method of pain control after topical pepper spray exposure.

Anyways, that was quite the tangent. Bottom line, should we all begin taking tablets of capsaicin and dousing our food with hot sauce? If you like hot sauce, go for it, but I don’t think we should start taking supplements until we have randomized, controlled trials proving benefit.

Finally today, we learn how red pepper powder may be an effective treatment for IBS and chronic dyspepsia (or indigestion).

Nearly 50 million Americans come down with food poisoning every year. Over a hundred thousand are hospitalized, and thousands die every year just because of something they ate. If they had ordered something different, or chosen something else at the grocery store, they or their loved one would be alive today. But, in the vast majority of cases, food poisoning manifests as little more than a case of “stomach flu”—a few days of pain, vomiting, diarrhea, and then, it’s gone. So, what’s the big deal?

Well, as described in a recent editorial in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, in many cases, that acute infection can trigger a chronic “postinfectious functional gastrointestinal disorder” that can last for years, or even forever—the two most common of which are irritable bowel syndrome and functional dyspepsia, which means chronic indigestion.

Up to 10% of people stricken with Salmonella, or E. coli, or Campylobacter are left with irritable bowel syndrome. The thought is that the “transitory inflammation during the infection could lead to subtle but permanent changes in the structure and function of the digestive system,” causing the lining of the gut to become hypersensitized.

How do they determine if someone’s rectum is hypersensitive, though? Innovative Japanese researchers developed a device to deliver “repetitive painful rectal distention”— basically, a half-quart balloon hooked up to a fancy bicycle pump that was lubricated with olive oil, inserted, and inflated until they couldn’t stand the pain anymore. And, those with irritable bowel had significantly lower pain threshold: significantly less “rectal compliance.”

Healthy people felt the pain where you’d expect to feel the pain with, effectively, a balloon animal in your behind. But, many with IBS also experienced abdominal pain with the same procedure, indicating a hypersensitivity of the entire gut wall. Well, if that’s the problem, how can we desensitize the gut?

We learned in the cluster headache story about the ability of hot pepper compounds to deplete pain fibers of substance P—a neurotransmitter the body uses to transmit pain.

It’s bad enough to have to rub hot peppers up your nose; where do you have to stick them for irritable bowel? Thankfully, researchers chose the oral route.

“Conclusions: The results of this preliminary study indicate that the chronic administration of red pepper powder in IBS patients with enteric-coated pills was significantly more effective than placebo in decreasing the intensity of abdominal pain and bloating and was considered by the patients more effective than placebo,…[suggesting] a novel way of dealing with this frequent and distressing functional disease….”

Though after the 48 million cases of annual food poisoning, 10% may end up with IBS, even more may end up with chronic dyspepsia—chronic indigestion. How do peppers work against that? Well, you can’t use whole peppers, because then, you couldn’t double blind a fake placebo pepper. But, if you give capsules of red pepper powder to folks suffering from chronic indigestion—about one-and-a-half teaspoons’ a day worth—and compared to placebo, within a month, their overall symptoms dropped, including their stomach pain, and bloated feelings. Less nausea, too.

The frequently prescribed drug Propulsid (cisapride) worked almost as good as the red pepper powder and was considered generally well tolerated—that is, until it killed you. Propulsid was pulled from the market after causing dozens of deaths.