Effects of eating chili every day

A new study shows that spicy spices such as chili and pepper play a huge role in fighting obesity.

Previous studies have shown that spicy foods can reduce the risk of premature death from cancer, cardiovascular disease and respiratory problems. Not only that, a recent study by American and Chinese scientists has shown why eating chili peppers can help fight obesity by preventing intestinal inflammation and insulin resistance.

The “hero” is none other than capsaicin, a substance found in chili peppers, which is what gives us the spicy taste when we eat chili peppers.

Scientists fed the mice a high-fat diet along with capsaicin. Over time, the scientists found that the mice gained little weight.

Researchers concluded that capsaicin has a preventive effect on the risks of obesity.

Capsaicin in chili peppers has been shown to help prevent obesity. Photo: Shutterstock/Teri Virbickis.

Different chilies contain different amounts of capsaicin, and therefore different degrees of spiciness. Chili peppers are measured in Scoville Heat Units (SHU), which were developed by American chemist Wilbur Scoville in 1912.

The world's hottest peppers that have been recorded in the Guinness Book of Records are Carolina Reaper (1,500,000-2,000,000 SHU), Trinidad Moruga Scorpion (1,200,000-2,000,000 SHU), Bhut jolokia (900,000-1,000,000 SHU).

In 2015, researchers from Oxford University, Harvard School of Public Health (USA) and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences conducted a survey of nearly 500,000 middle-aged people. The researchers found that people who regularly ate chili peppers once or twice a day had a 14% lower risk of death from cancer, cardiovascular disease and respiratory problems.

Scientists from the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer say every 11cm increase in waist size increases the risk of obesity-related cancers by 13%.

Not all cancers are linked to belly fat and body weight, but researchers say waist size is strongly associated with 10 cancers, including bowel, esophageal, stomach, liver, gallbladder, pancreatic, uterine, ovarian, kidney and postmenopausal breast cancer.

Brain scans of overweight, obese and type 2 diabetic people show abnormalities in brain structure compared to normal people. Their brains have much thinner gray matter (where nerve cells are mainly concentrated) than healthy people. This is a harbinger of future neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

According to Zing