You may feel the heat after eating cayenne peppers, but cayenne peppers could lower rather than raise your body temperature. Capsaicin, the ingredient that puts the spice in cayenne as well as other hot peppers, may help you keep cool on the inside by lowering your internal body temperature even if you're red-faced and feeling overheated on the outside after eating a pepper or two.
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When you eat foods high in capsaicin, you experience a burning sensation that is often perceived as being harmful to the mouth or stomach. But capsaicin doesn't actually damage tissues by causing burning -- it merely sends a message to your brain that makes you feel like your mouth or stomach is burning. In the same way, when you eat cayenne peppers, your brain gets the message that it's overheated, even when it's not. Your sweat output increases as your body attempts to cool itself down.
Results
When you have a low-grade fever, your body increases sweat production to cool you off. Because consuming capsaicin also increases sweating, eating cayenne pepper could help lower a low-grade fever. Consuming spicy peppers like cayenne may help natives in tropical climates to keep their body temperatures within normal limits even in excessive heat.
Studies
A Japanese animal study published in the July 200 issue of "The Korean Journal of Internal Medicine" found that systemic capsaicin in rats caused both a heat-generating effect and a heat-loss effect. Different areas of the brain produced different effects, with the brain stem generating heat and the forebrain increasing heat loss. A 2004 California State Science Fair project by Salvador Pacach tested the effects of capsaicin on oral temperature. Although he hypothesized that capsaicin would lower temperature, he found that more than 50 percent of volunteers experienced a rise in temperature.
Considerations
If you're running a low-grade fever, chomping down on a cayenne pepper-laden dish could help lower your temperature, at least temporarily. But to consistently treat a low-grade fever, over-the-counter medications such as aspirin or acetaminophen are a proven bet.
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