Study Shows Eating Hot Peppers Helps You Live Longer!

Do you enjoy spicy foods like hot peppers? If so, you might end up living longer according to a new study by researchers at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine. They discovered that consumption of hot chili peppers was associated with a 13 percent lower reduction in mortality. Most of the reduction was due to a decrease in deaths from heart disease and stroke.

Going back hundreds of years, peppers and spices have been used by traditional healers for the treatment of various diseases. This new study, along with another 2015 study in China, examined chili pepper consumption and its association with dying. Both studies reported a decrease in mortality for pepper eaters.

Using National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (NHANES) III data collected from more than 16,000 Americans who were followed for up to 23 years, researchers examined the baseline characteristics of the participants according to hot red chili pepper consumption.

They discovered that consumers of hot red chili peppers tended to be “younger, male, white, Mexican-American, married, and to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and consume more vegetables and meats . . . had lower HDL-cholesterol, lower income, and less education,” in comparison to participants who did not consume red chili peppers. They examined data from a median follow-up of 18.9 years and observed the number of deaths and then analyzed specific causes of death.

“Although the mechanism by which peppers could delay mortality is far from certain, Transient Receptor Potential (TRP) channels, which are primary receptors for pungent agents such as capsaicin (the principal component in chili peppers), may in part be responsible for the observed relationship,” say the study authors.

There are some possible explanations for red chili peppers’ health benefits, state Chopan and Littenberg in the study. Among them are the fact that capsaicin – the principal component in chili peppers – is believed to play a role in cellular and molecular mechanisms that prevent obesity and modulate coronary blood flow, and also possesses antimicrobial properties that “may indirectly affect the host by altering the gut microbiota.”

“Because our study adds to the generalizability of previous findings, chili pepper — or even spicy food – consumption may become a dietary recommendation and/or fuel further research in the form of clinical trials,” says Chopan.