Health Benefits, Safety Information, Dosage, and More

Written by WebMD Editorial Contributors

In this Article

• Health Benefits
• Health Risks
• Amounts and Dosage

Almost everyone knows what capsaicin is, though perhaps not by name. It’s the chemical in chili peppers that gives them their famous heat. This heat makes capsaicin ideal for spicing foods and also provides a range of medicinal properties. 

Dating back to roughly 7,000 years in Mexico, chili peppers are known for their nutritional value (they’re rich in vitamins and minerals). Capsaicin is also known for its antimicrobial and anticancer properties.

Capsaicin is the main ingredient in ointments, lotions, and patches that are used for pain relief. It interacts with a nerve receptor called TRPV1, which is found in the brain, peripheral nerves, bladder, blood vessels, and other areas. Since this receptor is so widely distributed throughout the body, there may be many potential health benefits of capsaicin that haven’t been researched.  

Capsaicin, which doesn’t have any calories or nutrients, binds to TRPV1, a channel of nerves that detect internal or external sources of heat. Exposure to heat sources like capsaicin makes these TRPV1 receptors less sensitive over time. That means your body gradually gets more and more tolerant of capsaicin.

Capsaicin’s health benefits are thought to include: 

Heart Health

Capsaicin’s anti-inflammatory qualities are believed to be responsible for its heart-health benefits. For example, one 3-month study found that capsaicin significantly reduced the risk factors of heart disease in adults who had low HDL cholesterol (good cholesterol) levels. 

Weight Loss

Some studies have found that capsaicin could slightly increase metabolism, the rate at which you use energy and burn fat. Others have indicated it might also reduce your appetite, which could help you eat less. 

Pain Relief

Capsaicin is a key ingredient in various pain-relief treatments that can be used in the form of a cream, lotion, or patch. You can buy over-the-counter versions to help with mild joint or muscle pain.  Prescription-strength capsaicin patches are applied at the doctor’s office to treat conditions like postherpetic neuralgia and diabetic nerve pain in your feet.  

While capsaicin does have health benefits, it’s not for everyone. Some people are more sensitive to its effects than others. You might have unpleasant side effects from capsaicin, especially if your body isn’t used to it. 

Possible side effects of capsaicin include: 

Nausea and Vomiting

Capsaicin patches may help with pain relief, but their higher concentrations of capsaicin could cause problems for some. Nausea and vomiting are commonly reported side effects of these patches. 

Diarrhea 

Capsaicin is known to irritate the lining of the digestive tract, which could cause an upset stomach and diarrhea. It may also cause food to be digested too quickly, which can make your stool burn as it passes through your body.

Acid Reflux

Capsaicin could worsen symptoms of acid reflux. The sensation of heat it creates can irritate your stomach lining, possibly causing reflux, heartburn, and other issues. 

In a study of the use of capsaicin-based treatments for weight loss, participants reported few problems when they took 6 milligrams of capsinoids (substances that are chemically similar to capsaicin) by mouth each day for 12 weeks.

Another study that followed 27 people for 4 weeks found they were able to eat approximately 30 grams of chopped chilis per day without any noticeable negative effects on their health.

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Spray hot pepper up your nose? Sure, it may sting. But it also may stop your migraine pain. The spray has a special formula of capsaicin, a chemical in the part of the pepper that holds the seeds. It numbs your brain’s trigeminal nerve, where some migraines and severe headaches start. Seven out of 10 people in a study who had cluster, tension, and other headaches had total relief for a while. All said the sharp tingle was worth it.

Pop a pepper, and you might live longer. One large study showed that adults who ate at least one fresh or dried hot red chili pepper a month for almost 20 years lowered their chances of death by 13%. Researchers aren’t sure why, but they think some credit may be due to the peppers’ nutrients and their power to fight inflammation and obesity.

Got a sneezy, runny, or stopped-up nose that your doctor calls non-allergic rhinitis? That’s when your nose runs constantly but it’s not from a cold, allergies, or cigarette smoke. If so, then a whiff of capsaicin may help calm your symptoms. It’ll smart at first, and may even seem to worsen your misery. But capsaicin will kick in soon after. Your stuffiness might not bother you for a few months.

The total-body flush you sense when you eat a hot pepper is more than a feeling. Capsaicin — the chemical behind the zing — amps up the rate at which your whole body heats up. It also activates a sensory neuron called TRPV1, which helps keep fat from building up and controls your appetite. This metabolism-quickening combo might help you lose weight. Researchers hope to apply this knowledge to curb weight gain.

Capsaicin triggers a heat sensation to nerve cells that normally yell: “Pain!” The message to your brain reads: “Hot!” This signal-switch trick has been used for centuries to help control pain.

Capsaicin is the super ingredient in many creams, lotions, and patches that bring on heat to quickly quash pain from arthritis and neuropathy. In one study, it cut discomfort from arthritis and fibromyalgia by half in just a few weeks. Results from other studies were less convincing, suggesting capsaicin works best when coupled with another pain reliever. Either way, you need to reapply it often.

In the lab, capsaicin seems to kill cells linked to more than 40 types of cancer, including the colon, liver, lung, and pancreatic cancers and leukemia. The spicy chemical changes how some genes linked with cancer cells act and even stops them from growing. But other research suggests capsaicin itself may be linked to cancer. More studies are needed.

Hot peppers are natural antimicrobials. That means they kill germs and other microorganisms that can spoil canned or packaged foods. Manufacturers are testing to see if chili pepper extracts could be a better choice than artificial preservatives.

Fiery peppers pack major health perks. In terms of vitamin C, they beat oranges 3 to 1. They’re also stuffed with vitamins A, B, and E. Some studies suggest capsaicin acts as an antioxidant to protect your cells and helps tamp down inflammation.

Chile is Spanish for pepper. In Mexico, a chile can be any kind of pepper, even mild or sweet. But almost anywhere else, chile or chili means hot. Varieties of hot pepper include Anaheim, cayenne, habanero, jalapeno, paprika, Tabasco, and some bell peppers. If you see a scary name like Ghost, Scorpion, or Reaper, it means beware.

Hot peppers have their own rankings. The Scoville heat scale rates the capsaicin level based on how much sugar water it takes to neutralize the heat. It ranges from 0 to 1,641,183 Scoville heat units (SHU). The top score is for the Carolina Reaper, the hottest pepper on earth. Buying tips: Dried peppers are hotter than fresh. The thinner the stem, usually the hotter the pepper.

Super-spicy snacks are scorching the snack scene. But too much hot pepper can give you belly pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, or a burning feeling in your gut. Even kids are ending up in the ER after too much munching. A safer hack to kick up your flavor is to sprinkle a little hot pepper on popcorn or sweet potato fries.

A dash of peppers can go on just about any dish. Keep a bag of frozen chopped or sliced peppers on standby to add instant color and flavor to any meal. Dice fresh peppers to dress up pizza and pasta. You can also grill or roast them for a change of taste. Be sure to wear rubber gloves when handling superhot peppers like jalapeno and serrano. Remove the seeds to tone down the temp.

You’ll know right away if you have a brush with the hot stuff. It can even trigger your asthma if you inhale it. If you eat a real flamer, skip the water and take small sips of milk, or reach for the ice cream or cottage cheese. Water doesn’t dissolve capsaicin, but milk fat does. If you don’t do dairy, eat a piece of bread or other starchy food. If it gets on your skin or in your eyes, flush well with warm water.

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ChemMatters: “Muy Caliente!”

National Gardening Association: “Edible of the Month: Hot Peppers,” “Pepper Types,” “Some Like It Hot. ”

Arthritis Foundation: “Supplement Guide: Capsaicin.”

Harvard Health Publishing: “Ask the Doctor: How Does Hot Pepper Cream Work to Relieve Pain?”

American Institute for Cancer Research: “Some Like It Hot.”

New Mexico State University: “Know Your Chile Peppers.”

Practical Neurology: “Migraine Spray Aims to Reduce Headache Pain With Capsaicin.”

Journal of Herbs, Spices & Medicinal Plants: “Nutritional and Medical Importance of Red Pepper (Capsicum spp.).”

European Journal of Physiology: “Structure and Function of TRPV1.”

Bioscience Reports: “Dietary Capsaicin and Its Anti-Obesity Potency: From Mechanism to Clinical Implications.”

Physiology & Behavior: “The Effects of Hedonically Acceptable Red Pepper Doses on Thermogenesis and Appetite,” “Some Like it Hot: Testosterone Predicts Laboratory Eating Behavior of Spicy Food.”

Cleveland Clinic: “What Hot Spice Can Speed Your Metabolism?” 

International Journal of Cancer Research and Treatment: “Anticancer Properties of Capsaicin Against Human Cancer. ”

Chinese Medical Journal: “High Spicy Food Intake and Risk of Cancer: A Meta-analysis of Case-control Studies.”

PLoS One:  “The Association of Hot Red Chili Pepper Consumption and Mortality: A Large Population-Based Cohort Study.”

Uisahak: “Medieval European Medicine and Asian Spices.”

Guinness World Records: “Hottest Chilli Pepper.”

National Capital Poison Center: “Capsaicin: When the ‘Chili’ is Too Hot.”

St. Louis Children’s Hospital: “The Worst Junk Foods For Your Kids.”

American Institute for Cancer Research: “Some Like It Hot.”

Biotechnic & Histochemistry: “Effects of Capsaicin on Testis Ghrelin Expression in Mice.”

University of the District of Columbia Center for Nutrition, Diet and Heath: “Peppers.”

Journal of Infectious Diseases & Therapy: “Antimicrobial Properties of Chili Pepper.”

Current Allergy and Asthma Reports: “Capsaicin for Rhinitis.”

Journal of Ethnopharmacology: “Antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties of Capsicum baccatum: From traditional use to scientific approach. ”

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Chili pepper prolongs life? Doctor’s Opinion

• Dr. Michael Moseley
• BBC

March 10, 2017

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Anyone who has ever tasted a really hot chili knows that it can make you feel like it’s on fire. in your mouth.

Chili peppers come in a variety of shapes, colors, sizes and spiciness, but what they all have in common is the wild burning sensation they all cause in the mouth, eyes and any other part of the body that comes into contact with chili juice.

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Many people think that the spiciest part of a chili is its grains, but in fact it is a thin porous white layer inside, called the placenta. Bite it and you will feel a real burning sensation.

This burning sensation is caused by the chemical capsaicin, which is found in tiny glands located in this placenta.

When you eat chili, capsaicin is released into your saliva and mixes with the vanilloid receptors in your mouth that cause us to feel burning pain.

Capsaicin causes a burning sensation because the molecules of this alkaloid perfectly hit the receptors, and when this happens, the receptors send a signal to the brain that the mouth is on fire.

Monkey screwed up

Sometime in prehistoric times, wild chili peppers began to produce capsaicin precisely to protect themselves from being eaten by mammals like you and me.

From an evolutionary point of view, this plant prefers its seeds to be dispersed as far as possible with the help of birds.

Strange but true: birds, unlike mammals, do not have vanilloid receptors, so they do not feel any burns. Capsaicin perfectly repelled animals and thus attracted birds.

But then a great ape appeared with a huge frontal lobe (anterior part of the brain), which somehow learned to love this peppery burning.

Image copyright, Getty Images

Image caption,

Man has learned to overcome the heat of chili

So not only are we not avoiding capsaicin, most of us love it. Why?

Chili peppers are measured in units of the Scoville Scale (SHU).

A medium hot pepper like the long Dutch chili has 500 units, but one of the hottest in the world, the Naga Indian chili, has something in the region of 1.3 million ECU.

But the world record holder for “hotness” is the Carolina Reaper (listed in 2013 in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s hottest), first grown in the US city of Rock Hill, South Carolina.

The Carolina Reaper burns at 1.57 million Scoville units, according to Winthrop University of South Carolina.

So what happens when we bite into a really hot pepper? As part of our “Secrets of Your Food” program, botanist James Vaughn and I decided to compete in eating chili peppers.

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In the first minutes after I ate my first chili, my eyes watered and my heart rate jumped.

My body responded to the initial pain with an adrenaline rush. This not only made my heart beat faster, but my pupils also dilated. With each new round, the peppers we tested became spicier, and soon we both gave up.

If we could bite into a really spicy chili, it’s quite possible that we would experience a peppery endorphin rush, that is, a kind of “happy rush”.

Endorphins are pleasure hormones, natural painkillers that our body releases in response to the heat of chili. But because they are opiates, they cause an all-pervading feeling of pleasure, happiness.

This is entertainment for thrill-seekers who like to tickle their nerves. And although I myself have not experienced anything like this, I have heard from hardened chili eaters that this happens.

But apart from pain and dubious pleasures, is there any benefit to the body in chili?

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Photo caption,

Chili seeds are spread by birds that don’t feel the sting

Quite possibly.

In a recent study, researchers at the University of Vermont studied the responses of 16,000 Americans who answered questions about food and taste preferences for more than 18 years.

During this period, about 5 thousand people died. They found that those who ate a lot of red chili were 13% less likely to die during this period than those who didn’t.

This is in line with another study in China that came to the same conclusion.

So how can chili be useful?

Scientists believe that capsaicin may improve circulation or even change the composition of our intestinal flora for the better.

Whatever it is, I enjoy sprinkling chili on my omelet in the morning.

Benefits of Chili Peppers / Eight reasons not to be afraid of the spicy taste – an article from the “What to eat” section on Food.ru

8 chili effects everyone should know about

1. May help with migraines

Spray chili pepper spray up your nose? Ay, it burns! But there is a chance to get rid of a migraine. The fact is that the basis of the spray is capsaicin, an organic compound responsible for the spicy taste of pepper.

Capsaicin has an anesthetic effect on certain receptors in the human body and can be used as a rapid pain reliever for some types of migraines and cluster headaches.

According to a 2014 study, 7 out of 10 people experience complete relief from migraines and headaches after using a capsaicin-based nasal spray.

2. Increases life expectancy

Regular use of chili peppers helps you live longer. According to another study, it is enough to eat 1 red pepper per month, fresh or dried. Scientists found that those who ate chili peppers monthly for 20 years reduced their risk of death by 13%. Some believe this is due to the pepper’s high nutrient content and anti-inflammatory properties.

In another study, scientists found evidence that eating chili peppers helps fight obesity.

3. Stops a runny nose

Are you sneezing, runny or stuffy nose? Perhaps this is what doctors call non-allergic rhinitis.

This condition is characterized by persistent runny nose, but not due to colds, allergies or cigarette smoke. According to researchers, in such cases, a drop of capsaicin in the nostrils helps to get rid of unpleasant symptoms, or at least alleviate them. True, at first this remedy causes burning and discomfort, and for some at first it can even aggravate the situation with a runny nose.

But rest assured, capsaicin will work wonders. Very quickly, the nose stops flowing, and often the effect lasts for several months.

4. Speeds up metabolism

Do you know the feeling of heat in the body when you eat hot peppers? This is because the same capsaicin in chili peppers increases the rate at which the body heats up. It also stimulates the TRPV1 receptor, which is involved in the body temperature maintenance system. The same receptor is involved in many important processes in our body, including regulating the processes of fat accumulation. Thus, capsaicin can affect appetite and metabolic processes in the body, which also helps to lose weight.

5. Reduces pain

Capsaicin, as already mentioned, causes a feeling of heat. Including at the level of sensory neurons that allow our body to detect pain. Except that with capsaicin, those neurons get it wrong.

If you smear a sore spot with pepper, instead of transmitting a message about pain, neurons send another message to the brain: “It’s getting hot!”.

This little trick has been used for centuries to naturally relieve pain.

6. Relieves arthritis

Capsaicin is the active ingredient in many warming creams, balms and patches used for rapid pain relief.

In one study, capsaicin halved the pain associated with arthritis and fibromyalgia in just a few weeks.

But other studies are unfortunately less conclusive, which is why many scientists believe that capsaicin only works best when combined with pain medication. In addition, capsaicin-based treatments need to be repeated regularly.

7. Helps preserve food

Hot pepper has natural antibacterial properties.

Researchers have found that it can kill germs and bacteria, including microorganisms that spoil canned food. Manufacturers are exploring the use of chili extracts as an alternative to artificial preservatives. This would allow for fewer preservatives in the foods we eat on a daily basis.

8. Protects cells

Studies show that capsaicin has antioxidant properties to better protect the body’s cells. And at the same time it helps to destroy malignant cells by binding to the proteins of their mitochondria.

What is dangerous about chili pepper

At the same time, chili can also be harmful, so it should not be abused. Too much chili pepper can lead to health problems. What?

Here is the list:

• abdominal pain;

• nausea;

• vomiting;

• diarrhea;

• burning in the intestines.

Some even end up in the hospital after eating too many spicy foods.

Interesting fact

Remember: if you overdo it with pepper and your mouth is on fire, water will not help. Capsaicin is insoluble in water. But it is highly soluble in fat. So drink milk, chew cheese.