Your instincts could be right
When I feel ill I eat spicy goods. I staved off gall bladder surgery for over a year eating nothing but Indian food . If I have a sore throat I eat something with hot peppers and what the Indians call the heating spices. If my stomach is upset it wants broth with a sprinkling of cayenne chili on top. Whether it is the mildness of green chilis or the smokiness of Anaheim chilies or the flat out nuclear pow of Scotch Bonnets or Caribbean Bird Peppers, there’s a lot of room in my life for heat.
Even foods that aren’t meant to be hot often get a pinch of peperoncino, not enough to make it hot, but to enlarge the flavors that lurk within. Vanilla ice cream, hot chocolate, scrambled eggs and omelets, corn on the cob, and the list could easily go on for pages.
Hot peppers and powders made of them can also soothe skin problems — or inflame them, so watch it. Plain old petroleum jelly with peppers added can be great stuff, but wear latex gloves while making it or applying it. Trust me. You’ll forget and hurt yourself!
I heard a decade or more ago that capsaicin contained something called substance P that was shown to affect joint pain, psoriasis, maybe Alzheimer’s and research was under way to explore why some people seemed to be able to survive high serum cholesterol with diets high in peppers. It seemed the pepper was a real power plant.
Now we have some wonderful news that I got via the BBC. A headline today read “How Spicy Foods Can Kill Cancers.” I don’t know about you, but I would much rather increase my already hefty consumption of peppers and pepper products than depend on apricot pits, which pretty much are and always were a sham.
Science is my friend, and when he comes into my kitchen we are a great bunch.
Hi, Just found your blog through Niki’s.
It’s interesting what you say about peppers. I’ve read that putting ground chili peppers in your socks can keep away chilblains( I suppose that it keeps them warm) and that eating the seeds in hot peppers is good against heart related disease.
I personally add them to just about everything as I love the taste!
Now, you have to be careful… the article does state that the effects were observed in vitro, by applying capsaicin to cultures of cancerous cells. But they did mention the possibility of working on types of skin cancers. My dad just had a spot of cancer removed from his forehead, and I should tell him to apply some scotch bonnet paste!
But still, the spicy stuff has got to be good for ya… add some turmeric to it as well, which also has excellent properties!
This is excellent news for all Calabrians! I don’t think there’s anything I don’t add peperoncino too these days.
That should be only one “o” up there in “too,” but I also wanted to add that aren’t spices/hot peppers supposed to enhance sex drive as well? Living longer, having more sex, and remembering it all to boot…there’s a slogan for you ;)
Sognatrice, although I have heard that, I also heard it depended on where they were applied. Until The Beeb states categorically how to use them to improve loving, I would be very wary.
I heard a story from a chef about how he cleaned 200 Jalapenos bare handed once and lived to regret it in the bathroom…
I think many don’t realize that you can add a lot of chili without actually burning your tongue, if you add it to a wide variety of dishes, a bit here, a bit there. And it does a body good.
I love the spice but so the opposite when I have tummy ache, all mild things for me until I am better but when I have a cold, hot broth and chili act like a natural decongestant and all around spicy DayQuil.
Gia, there is a reason why you are not Indian! But perhaps I am?