Are Hot Peppers Good For Your Health?

Hot peppers provide more than just spice to your food. Hot peppers contain an abundance of various health-promoting chemical compounds that can reduce your risk of various chronic diseases. Only hot peppers contain the health-beneficial ingredient capsaicin, the chemical compound that gives you the burning sensation when exposed to your skin.

Antioxidants

Humans have been using capsaicin for medicinal purposes for centuries. Capsaicin is a chemical compound with powerful antioxidant properties that can neutralize free radicals, or highly reactive substances. Free radicals can harm your cells and biomolecules such as the DNA, which contains your genetic code, proteins and lipids. Other antioxidant substances found in hot peppers include vitamin A, carotenoids, vitamin C and flavonoids. Only plants produce flavonoids and carotenoids, a substance that can convert into vitamin A All antioxidants can help strengthen your immune system, allowing your body to produce strong, healthy white blood cells to counterattack bacteria and other foreign organisms.

Anti-Cancer Agent

Consuming hot peppers regularly also might kill cancer cells by triggering apoptosis, programmed cellular death. In a study on prostate cancer cells, Dr. Akio Mori and colleagues from UCLA demonstrated that treatment of capsaicin on prostate cancer cells inhibits tumor growth and induces apoptosis. The finding, reported in the March 2006 issue of "Cancer Research," indicates that capsaicin might act as an anti-cancer agent in not only prostate cancer cells, but also other types of cancer. Vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, and any phenolic compounds, such as flavonoids, can reduce your risk of cancer by protecting the DNA, lipids and proteins from free radicals and disrupting the stages of cancer.

Cardiovascular Disease Protector

Capsaicin, at low levels, can reduce cholesterol level, while vitamin C and flavonoids can decrease high blood pressure and protect against heart disease. Cayenne peppers in particular have been shown to decrease the incidence of blood clot formation, reduce cholesterol levels, prevent atherosclerosis -- blocked arteries by fatty substances -- and heart disease, and improve circulation in your hands, fingers, legs and toes.

Age-Related Eye Diseases Protector

Much of age-related eye diseases results from damaged tissues caused by the accumulation of free radicals and toxins in the body. Those substances can damage your DNA, cells and tissues. For example, age-related cataracts, the clouding of the normal lens of the eyes, results from tissue damage. The lens, which sit behind the iris and pupil, are composed mostly of water and protein. The clouding of the lens forms when the lens protein starts clumping together due to chemical changes, alterations that arise from free-radical tissue damage. According to Dr. Mark Babizhayev and colleagues in "Drugs in Research and Development," free radicals play an important role in age-related cataract development. The researchers based their conclusion on the finding of a significant presence of highly reactive molecules, the byproducts of free radical-induced lipid breakdown, in the initial stages of cataract.

Macular degeneration, another age-related eye condition, attributes to the breakdown of cells in the macular tissue, which sits near the center of the retina, a layer of light-sensitive tissue located inside at the back wall of the eye. The breakdown of cells can be attributed to the attack of free radicals. People with macular degeneration lose their sharp, central vision, making it difficult for them to read and drive. Because hot peppers contain flavonoids, carotenoids, capsaicin and other antioxidant contents, which can safely interact with free radicals and prevent them from harming cells and damaging biomolecules, they can reduce your risk of cataracts and macular degeneration.