Feelin' hot, hot, hot? You will after reading about a new study that shows eating spicy foods could prolong your life and ward off cancer.
How are spicy foods good for you?
What's the secret? Capsaicin, found in chillies, helps the body turn over more cells in the body and slows cancer cell growth. That is, the compound "causes cancer cells to commit suicide" by triggering their death.
Capsaicin and cancer
Previous studies have shown that capsaicin reduces the rate of cancer cell growth by up to a staggering 80 percent. Even more impressive, it doesn't even touch healthy cells, making it an apparent cancer cell fighter.
How does it do it? Scientists are still stumped. But they have seen capsaicin attach to the outer cell wall, prompting chemical changes on the cell's surface.
As a Sciencealert story summarises: "The most popular hypothesis to explain what's going on here is that the capsaicin is promoting a process known as apoptosis - programmed cell death that leads to a higher turnover of cells. It's basically regulated cell suicide in the interest of cleaning up cells that are no longer needed."
Should you eat more chillies?
Science says eating chillies and spicy foods whole is the best way to benefit from capsaicin's cancer-zapping qualities. However you prepare and cook them, the compound release from the chillies and are ready to be absorbed by the body.
And if you add them to a small amount of fat, absorption will be aided – according to researchers from the Research Centre for Food and Development in Mexico.
But the Prostate Cancer organisation in the UK has advised men against adding too many chillies to food. They say since high amounts of spicy foods are linked to stomach cancers, it's better to wait until capsaicin is available in drug form.
Originally published on Jan 07, 2016
