"How Hot Peppers May Extend Your Life"
Four out of four studies on spicy food and mortality
found a significant decrease in the risk of premature death,
as I detailed in my last video.
The intake of sweet peppers also seemed to help,
but to a lesser extent; so, there may be some benefit
to the spicy capsaicin compound itself.
I have a whole section on chili peppers in my Fat Burners chapter
in How Not to Diet: how cayenne pepper can counteract
the metabolic slowing that accompanies weight loss
and accelerate fat burning as a bonus.
So, maybe the weight loss benefits account for the mortality benefits?
Apparently not, since there was a mortality risk reduction
with chili pepper consumption
even after controlling for body mass index.
Maybe the spice was used as a replacement for salt?
Anything that reduces sodium intake could improve longevity,
as excess salt consumption is the deadliest dietary risk factor,
the worst thing about the human diet,
wiping out millions of people every year.
Not only could you use the spice to replace salt,
the spicy compound actually makes things
taste saltier than they actually are.
Sprinkling on some red pepper powder
can increase your salt taste sensitivity;
so, you can achieve the same salty taste with less salt.
You can put people in a PET scanner and pick up differences
in their secondary taste cortex, the part of your brain
associated with pleasure signaling to salty foods.
So, you can use hot peppers to hack your brain for your health.
And indeed, those with a high spice preference
had lower salt intake and better blood pressures,
and this again appears to be independent
of the anti-obesity benefit of hot pepper consumption,
though the lower risk of developing high blood pressure
among those with higher hot pepper intake
was also independent of sodium intake;
so, there may be some other benefit pathways as well
like maybe it also helps your kidneys excrete more salt too,
though the evidence to support this was derived
from studies on mice; so, who knows.
However it works, eating spicy foods or adding
supplemental spicy flavor to food by like
sprinkling on cayenne pepper or hot sauce
represents a novel lifestyle intervention
that can reduce both salt intake and blood pressure.
Here are some examples of no-salt added hot sauces.
Even regular tabasco is pretty low in sodium,
though only the original flavor.
Some of their other spin-off flavors like
buffalo/habanero/chipotle have 5 times more.
Now, just because all studies on spicy food and mortality to date
suggest hot peppers may help you live longer
doesn’t mean you can go out and eat a ghost pepper,
designated the Guinness book’s hottest pepper in the world in 2007.
Here’s the peppers you may be used to measure
in the hundreds of thousands of Scoville heat units.
Some varieties of habanero can be 50 times as hot as jalapenos.
To get to ghost peppers, though,
you have to switch over to millions of units.
The ghost pepper beat out the habanero in 2007,
which itself got out shadowed by the Trinidad Scorpion in 2011,
and then 2013, burning as the reigning champ, the Carolina Reaper.
But just eating a ghost pepper,
which this poor guy did as part of a contest,
resulted in such violent vomiting he ruptured his esophagus,
which is a potentially life-threatening surgical emergency.
The only thing hotter than the reaper is pure pepper spray,
which can lead to such violent coughing you can rupture a lung.
Pepper spray in the eye only seems to be a problem
if you can’t wash it out.
This woman was pepper sprayed and handcuffed away
in a cell for 9 hours and appears to have suffered
permanent damage to her vision.
The best thing you can do if you’re trying to help someone
sprayed in the face is try to calm them down,
make sure they’re breathing ok, remove their contact lenses
as soon as possible, and then, abundantly irrigate
their eyes to wash out the chemical.
Really abundantly, as in washing their eyes with water or saline
for a full 10-20 minutes, which is a long time
to be washing your eye out.
Again, after contact lenses have been removed,
or even better not worn to an event
where you might be pepper sprayed in the first place.
Even just ambient exposure to pepper gas can cause
dry eye symptoms that last for weeks,
even if you’re not sprayed directly.
It’s ironic that the Chemical Weapons Convention
prohibits the use of these riot control agents during warfare;
yet, they are routinely used to quell civilian protest.
The most serious eye injuries though, are trauma
from fired projectiles like pepper balls,
leading to the suggestion that protestors wear
ballistic eye protection, recommending that medical centers
proactively reach out to protest leaders and participants
regarding appropriate safety precautions.
In terms of what you can do for pepper spray irritation
on your skin, there are anecdotal reports
that baby shampoo is helpful.
However, as yet, there have been no published scientific studies
that demonstrate their effectiveness until...now.
“Baby Shampoo to Relieve the Discomfort
of Tear Gas and Pepper Spray Exposure:
A Randomized Controlled Trial.”
Police recruits received a burst of pepper spray to the face,
then were randomized to washing off with water
or water along with some Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo and…
it didn’t work at all.
How about using Maalox,
or a numbing lidocaine gel, or milk?
Nothing beat out plain old water.
Copious water decontamination is the preferred method
of pain control after topical pepper spray exposure.
Anyways, that was quite the tangent.
Bottomline, should we all begin taking tablets of capsaicin
and dousing our food with hot sauce?
If you like hot sauce, go for it, but I don’t think we should start
taking supplements until we have randomized,
controlled trials proving benefit.