Consumption of hot spicy foods and mortality—is chilli good for your health?
BMJ 2015; 351 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h4141 (Published 04 August 2015) Cite this as: BMJ 2015;351:h4141
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I have some personal experience with chilli. I'm a doctor and for many years I've had GORD and H. Pylori which hasn't responded to therapy. After years of Ppi treatment I developed nephritis as a side effect. Then eventually a sensitivity to H2 blockers.
In the interim I was living in Indonesia and ate increasing amounts of chillis. After becoming sensitive to H2 blockers I realised that my severe dyspepsia responded to chilli .
Since I have realised this I have had 2 negative tests for H. Pylori with no further therapy and my GORD symptoms are controlled as long as I eat daily strong chilli. I don't suggest this to patients as I am an uncontrolled cohort of 1, however my personal experience has been very convincing and I would be very interested in more research in this direction. I've always assumed that the lack of data was related to the fact for GORD we have a good , relatively safe set of treatments and chilli seems counter intuitive.
I understand this is a slightly different subject but it seems that there is potentially a lot to learn about this very commonly used spice.
Competing interests: No competing interests
The brief essay about the use of chilli in food lacks a quality of research and proper evidence and data because the consumption of chilli or spicy food is common among the region of South Asia and South East Asia and the author fails to provide a direct link to any damage from the use of spices (which specific spices and their quantity, etc) to the users. For example, most Chinese Resturants in Europe do not have spicy food or they do not include any strong chillies in 90% of their cooked dishes. Ginger is heavily used in certain dishes but spices or hot chillies are not used as I regularly visit and enjoy Chinese food in different parts of the UK. On the other hand, people of Indian origin and Pakistani and Bangladeshi households heavily use green chillies and hot spices in their respective cooking but no study so far has been conducted on the effects of spices on health, etc. But in the UK through the NHS I have read that the use of Ghee (butter oil and other types of oils in cooking) might contribute to health damage and so on.
However, the author of this article should again bring relevant evidence and data to prove whether the use of chilli or hot spices contributes to mortality or not.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Re: Consumption of hot spicy foods and mortality—is chilli good for your health?
My full applause to the statements by the editor(s); this is the indispensible precaution! A causal link is not established in this study; but this preliminary study might create more and founded interest into the value and function of spices in our food!
Competing interests: No competing interests