A recent study proposes that eating chilli peppers regularly could provide previously unrecognised health benefits. It states that chilli eaters may have a ‘significantly reduced risk of dying from cardiovascular disease or cancer’. The preliminary research will be presented this week at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2020.
In order to assess the effects of chilli pepper on longevity, researchers screened 4,729 studies from five leading global health databases, these were: Ovid, Cochrane, Medline, Embase and Scopus. These included four large studies which specifically included health outcomes for participants with data on chilli pepper consumption.
This provided the research team with the health and dietary records of more than 570,000 individuals in the United States, Italy, China and Iran, which allowed them to compare the outcomes of those who consumed chillis to those who rarely or never ate them.
Compared to those who “rarely” or “never” ate chillis, the analysis found people who did eat them had:
- a 26 per cent relative reduction in cardiovascular mortality
- a 23 per cent relative reduction in cancer mortality
- a 25 per cent relative reduction in all-cause mortality
“We were surprised to find that in these previously published studies, regular consumption of chili pepper was associated with an overall risk-reduction of all-cause, cardiovascular disease and cancer mortality,” senior author Bo Xu, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic’s Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, told independent.co.uk..