Chilli peppers lovers may be eating to a longer life, according to a new study published in The BMJ.
"We know something about the beneficial effects of spicy foods basically from animal studies and human studies very small," says Study author Qi Lu, an associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. Some of these preliminary studies have found that spicy food and their active components — like capsaicin, the compound found in Chili Peppers — could lower inflammation, improve metabolic status and have a positive effect on the gut bacteria and weight, he says.
But the human trial poor remains. So Qi and a team of researchers viewed questionnaire data from about half a million adults in China who participated in China studying BioBank Kadoorie between 2004-2008. Each person in the study reported their health status, alcohol consumption, consumption of spicy food, the main source of recruitment of chilli (fresh or dried, in a sauce or oil) as well as the consumption of meat and vegetables.
The researchers followed with them about seven years later. Compared to people who ate spicy food less than once a week, people who only ate once or twice a week had a 10% reduced risk of death. Bumping up the Spice consumption didn't make much difference; those who ate spicy food 3-7 days a week were 14% lower risk of death compared to more spice-averse.
Eat spicy foods rich in red pepper has also been linked to a lower risk of dying from some diseases, including cancer, ischemic heart disease and respiratory disease, they found. Further analysis revealed that fresh chilli had a stronger protective effect against death from those diseases.
More research is needed to make any case for causal protective effects of chili — this does not prove that spicy foods were the reason for health outcomes — but Qi is this observational research valuable. "It seems that increasing your intake moderately, only for 1-2 or 3-5 times per week, show very similar protective effect," she says. "Just increase moderately. That is probably enough. "