Caribbean Food Emporium

Chilli peppers & your health

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Are hot peppers bad for you ?"
Probably not, according to recent studies. A common concern is that hot peppers or other spicy foods cause ulcers, but there's no evidence that they do. Studies of areas where hot peppers are used extensively in cooking, such as Brazil and Thailand, have found no higher incidence of stomach ulcers among their populations. And in a study conducted at a Veterans Administration hospital, researchers ground up about an ounce of jalapeno pepper and injected it directly into the stomachs of volunteers. Follow-up observation showed no damage to their stomach linings. Neither do hot peppers aggravate or cause hemorrhoids as has often been claimed, since capsaicinoids, the 'hot' substance, are broken down before they reach the lower intestine.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the Jan/Feb 2000 issue of Chilli Pepper magazine, Dave Hirschopf, maker of Dave's Insanity sauces, wrote an interesting article on 'Substance P'. This is the chemical that may lead to the desensitisation of your reaction to hot peppers, i.e. the more you eat hot peppers, the less the effect they have on you. Substance P is a neurotransmitter, discovered in 1931 by Swedish scientists, that is thought to transmit pain signals, and well as other functions. It is also a neurokenin, known as NK1. As well as being found in nerve cells, substance P can be found in the brain, spinal cord and intestines.

The cause and effect sequence is thought to be as follows: You eat a hot chile pepper, the capsaicin in the pepper causes the nerve cells in the spinal cord to release substance P, this informs the brain that you are in pain. As you eat more peppers, your nerve cells become hypersensitive to substance P and no longer react in the normal way, i.e. your brain no longer gets the pain signals.

David Julius and Michael Caterina, of the University of California in San Francisco, have found the protein ion receptor for capsaicin, the pungent ingredient in hot chile peppers that causes painful heat sensation.

The protein, known as vanilloid receptor subtype 1 (VR1), is activated by binding to capsaicin. High, painful temperatures work in a similar way and cause the same sensation.

``In the same way that the study of morphine led to the discovery of nerve pathways in the brain that suppress pain, we believe that our having found the target of capsaicin activity will illuminate fundamental mechanisms of pain production,''.

Julius says that the VR1 channel opens up when it is activated by hot peppers and allows an influx of calcium and sodium ions to react to sensory nerve cells called nociceptors. They send impulses about tissue damage to the pain processing centres in the spinal cord and brain which cause the hot sensation in the mouth. Hot temperatures that produce pain in humans produce the same response.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is worth noting that birds cannot taste the hotness in peppers and the fruit of the bird peppers are so small that they are often eaten whole. The birds gizzard breaks up the pods and the seeds pass through undigested and surrounded by a nice nitrogenous fertiliser. Mammals, on the other hand, are discouraged by the extreme hotness of the bird peppers, unless of course, they are Chilli Heads !.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chilli peppers are all-season foods: they warm you up in winter and cool you down in the summer. This correlates to the feeling of warmth when eating chiles. Hot foods do increase perspiration, which may be the underlying reason they are enjoyed in hot climates. So a sweat and possibly a brief increase in your metabolic rate won't influence weight loss either. The best contribution to weight loss is the flavours chiles can add to foods when the fat has been removed. Studies done in populations that use hot peppers consistently found that these people show no higher incidence of any gastrointestinal diseases. In fact, there are some areas where they exhibit some beneficial effects. The Capsaicin has been identified as an anticoagulant and could possibly aid in preventing a heart attack or stroke. Since 1982, there have been more than 2,000 scientific studies published describing the medicinal benefits of chillies. These include treatments for asthma, arthritis, blood clots, cluster headaches, shingles and severe burns.

More Opinions about Chillies