What Happens to Your Body When You Eat Spicy Foods
Photo taken by author
Most spicy dishes find their roots in tropical places, and there are some theories as to why this is: the sweating that results helped the consumers cool down and experience some much-needed relief from the blazing sun. Additionally, spice may have served to mask the taste of the meat that spoiled quickly in these steamy places.
Chilis originating in Mexico were the original food that provided this new dimension for what we eat. They spread down Middle and South America and reached Africa and Europe with the help of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Soon after, chili peppers were introduced to Asia by Portuguese explorers. Since then, spice has become an important part of food for many cultures and regions. But why do spicy foods elicit a burning sensation on your tongue? Is consuming these foods beneficial? Let’s take a closer look.
What Do Spicy Foods Do to My Body?
The chemical compound responsible for the pain you experience when tasting spicy foods is called capsaicin. When capsaicin touches your tongue, it binds to the pain receptors that live there called the vanilloid receptors, specifically TRPV1, which then sends panic signals to the brain. These receptors are actually thermoreceptors, which is why spicy food feels like it’s burning your tongue. In response to these signals, the brain initiates a “cooling off” period characterized by a runny nose, teary eyes, and sweating.
There is a scientific reason why many people absolutely love spicy food. Some may have grown up in a culture where it’s traditional to indulge in spicy delicacies, others may claim that they enjoy the added dimension the heat provides to their food. Moreover, the pain that ensues as soon as spicy foods are ingested triggers the release of endorphins and dopamine, the brain’s "happy hormones,” that result in a feeling of euphoria.
The Health Benefits of Spicy Foods
Though these studies being carried out across China and the US are in their early stages, some have begun to suggest that eating spicy food, though painful, can actually help the consumer live longer. In the British Medical Journal, researchers have found that incorporating spicy foods into your diet can increase life expectancy. Using data from extensive medical examinations of over 500,000 Chinese citizens during a four-year period, researchers found that those who consumed more hot chili peppers or chili pepper oil had a 14% lower risk of death than those who didn’t consume any spicy foods, citing reductions in risks of contracting cancer, heart diseases, and respiratory issues.
This study is groundbreaking as it shows that spices don’t just kill microbes, like previously believed, but have a host of other important health benefits. However, I wouldn’t suggest that everyone start eating chili peppers daily and neither would the co-author of the study, Benjamin Littenberg. In 2017, he stated in The New York Times that the results of his own research weren’t conclusive enough for him to consider changing his own diet. As it goes with every study focused on diet, it’s difficult and nearly impossible to isolate the effects of spice on an individual. Though this was a large pool of people who come from various lifestyles, no one can definitively say that the 14% difference in life expectancy wasn’t due to another immeasurable factor. What kinds of foods were the subjects consuming their spices in? How spicy were each of the products? Did the people with an increased life expectancy work out daily and the others did not? Additionally, all of the data in this study was self-reported, meaning that subjects could have forgotten what they ate that day, bought a different pepper than they reported, etc.
There are even more health benefits emerging that may be linked to consuming spicy foods such as reducing the risk of obesity and diabetes, increasing the production of “brown fat” (the good kind) and faster burning of calories, and inhibiting the the growth of cancer cells by blocking angiogenesis (the production of new blood vessels which cancer cells need to reproduce). Again, these are not definitive results but could instead be affected by other beneficial lifestyle changes that resulted from that person eating more spicy food. This was demonstrated when over 600 test subjects decreased their salt consumption by an average of 3 grams in response to the increased amount of spice they were consuming.
So, are these potential health benefits due to the hormones that are released when spicy food is consumed? Is it instead due to the decreased amount of salt subjects ingest because spicy food makes what they eat taste saltier? What about another factor that researchers didn’t think to or couldn’t control? No one knows just yet. Researchers will have to keep looking for these answers. In the meantime, eating spicy foods (in moderation) can’t hurt.
Or maybe it will tomorrow :).
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C3pEzqr6J0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U1egSK0o1Q
https://www.rediff.com/getahead/2010/mar/11ten-health-benefits-of-spicy-food.htm
