Research suggest that eating chilli peppers can extend your life expectancy by up to 13 per cent, or an extra 10 years.
Researchers from the University of Vermont looked at data, taken from 16,000 American men who took part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 1988 and 1994. Over a 19-year period 34 per cent of the men involved passed away, but when the data was limited to just people that ate chilli peppers the figure dropped to around 22 per cent.
The research was published in science journal ‘Plos One’ and suggests that the reason for the lower death risk was because of a chemical compound contained within chilli peppers, knows as Capsaicin. Capsaicin is routinely used in the treatment of arthritis and has painkilling qualities.
Dr. Benjamin Litternberg, who co-authored the study, described the way in which Capsaicin reduced the levels of inflammation in the body. He said: “the types of deaths that were lowest in the pepper group were deaths due to vascular disease, heart attacks and stroke.”
Litternberg said his team’s findings back up the findings of a study that took place in 2015, that suggested that spicy food lead to a lower risk of death, with participants in the 2015 study showing “a significant decrease in mortality associated with hot red chilli pepper consumption.”
The 2015 study looked at around half a million Chinese people, and analysed their lives and diets over a 7-year period. The study found that the participants who were consuming spicy foods at least three times a week had a 14 per cent lower chance of dying early than those who did not.
Littenberg did concede that correlation does not always mean causation, and that further research would be needed into the matter before it could be considered true evidence of scientific fact, and that as such people should not take this research as gospel. Littenberg also went on to say that: “there’s a whole bunch of better, stronger, more convincing ways to improve your health than to go on a chilli pepper diet.”
