Hot peppers: taking the medical world by storm.

Hot peppers have an array of health benefits and it’s time to get them in your diet.Dawn Jackson Blatner, registered dietitian and author, once said people need to get creative in the ways they incorporate these little red, green, yellow, red and orange vegetable fireballs to acquire a taste for some of nature’s piquant foods.Blatner said hot pepper medicine is exciting because people have these foods already in their cabinets.

Yemti Harry Ndienla

“The first take home message for people is that these foods taste good and it can be good for you too,” the Chicago-based nutrition expert said.
“Hot peppers and their active ingredient, capsaicin, acts as an anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory agent, reduces risk for heart disease, and is great for people with arthritis or marathoners regarding inflammation. It’s a pretty special spice.”
Preliminary research proposes that adding a teaspoon of cayenne pepper can cause the body to burn an extra 15 calories after eating the meal.

The spice to healthier life.
Capsaicin, the hot pepper’s natural heat-causing component, has been proven to kill cancer cells, prevent sinus infections, serve as an anti-inflammatory agent, provide gastric relief and produce fat oxidation.
A daily dose of hot peppers lets people breath easier, feel less pain and lower their body fat.
The burn felt while eating a jalapeno, habenero or cayenne pepper comes directly from the food’s capsaicin. Capsaicin, though odorless and flavorless, is primarily found in the pepper’s seeds and ribs, but is also evenly distributed throughout the vegetable’s flesh, according to the Wellness Encyclopedia of Food and Nutrition.
It retains the unique ability to provoke prostate cancer cell suicide, repress joint pain, block pro-inflammatory chain reactions in the blood and reduce nerve fiber swelling in the brain.
The hot pepper’s fuel has the same metabolic effects as Ephedra without containing Ephredra’s negative cardiovascular side effects. It has been added to vitamin and weight loss supplements to increase effectiveness and safety.

Ulcers and small intestine irritation: The Common Myth
There is a common myth that hot pepper cause ulcers and small intestine irritation. However, research asserts that though spicy food may add to ulcer pain and irritation, it does not function as a cause: Ulcer development has never been factually linked to spicy foods or hot peppers.
Recent experiments at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles provided experimental evidence supporting capsaicin’s ability to halt prostate cell replication and encourage programmed cell death. Heiser said the uncovered benefits of capsaicin are on the right evolutionary road and we as eaters should get on the bandwagon.
“The first path was treating cancer cells with capsaicin and then to use the data to write the study that would then be applied to animals,” she said.
Animals might even be skipped because [hot peppers] are already in our food supply.”
Hot pepper research has become incredibly popular in 2007 with more than 200 placebo-controlled studies conducted.

Chili peppers, according to the Journal of Biological Chemistry can do more than just make you feel hot. “The active chemical in peppers can directly induce thermogenesis, the process by which cells convert energy into heat. Capsaicin is the chemical in chili peppers that contributes to their spiciness; CPS stimulates a receptor found in sensory neurons, creating the heat sensation and subsequent reactions like redness and sweating”.

Now, Yasser Mahmoud has found that capsaicin can create "heat" in a more direct manner by altering the activity of a muscle protein called SERCA. Normally, muscle contraction initiates following the release of a wave of calcium ions from a compartment called the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR); SERCA then actively pumps the calcium back into the SR (using ATP energy), causing muscle relaxation and renewing the cycle.

Capsaicin, however, can attach to SERCA and "uncouple" this pumping activity; that is, the protein still burns ATP energy but doesn't use it to pump calcium. Instead, all the ATP energy is given off as heat. This uncoupling, known as thermogenesis, is one important method of staying warm and is most often seen in hibernating animals.

These findings according to the America Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology further explain how capsaicin intake can increase metabolism and body temperature. And although these studies required relatively high amounts of capsaicin (probably more than someone could eat), the structure of capsaicin could be used as a model to design more potent compounds that might have clinical use such as treating hypothermia.