7 Reasons Why Chili Peppers Make You Live Longer

New research reports that people who eat red hot chili peppers live 13% longer.  In this article, I will review the studies and share seven reasons why there may be truth that chili peppers make you live longer.

The Scoville Scale

At the young age of 19, I was suddenly introduced to the upper end of the Scoville scale.  By way of background, the Scoville scale was created in 1912 by American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville.  To create this scale, Dr. Scoville measured the subjective heat units of peppers.  While not a perfect test, the Scoville scale is the best way we have of measuring how hot a pepper is.

Getting back to my story, I was invited over for dinner by the Lau family.  At the time I was living in New York City and the Lau family had just immigrated to the U.S. from Thailand.  I was looking forward to this meal as I had never experienced real Thai food before.

As soon as I walked in the door, the smell of Thai food made my mouth water in anticipation.  However, with the first bite, it wasn't my mouth but rather my eyes that were watering.

I had never eaten something so hot before in my life.  Little did I know at that time but Thai peppers score 50,000 to 100,000 Scoville heat units.  To put that in perspective, that's about 23 times hotter on the Scoville scale than the jalapeño pepper.

Needless to say, with a lot of rice and a lot of water I did my best to get through the meal.  As hard as I tried to be a grateful guest, I suspect it was pretty obvious that I was struggling.

Stomach Ulcers and Spicy Foods

As I was doing my best to eat the authentic Thai food at the Lau family, I remember wondering if I was going to get a stomach ulcer.  This is because doctors in the 1980s still believed that spicy foods caused ulcers.

Fortunately, this myth has been largely debunked.  Medical studies now consistently show that hot peppers actually prevent and heal ulcers. Even though your ulcer pain might be worse after eating hot peppers, the peppers are helping the ulcer to heal faster.

Chinese and American Hot Pepper Studies

In 2015 the world was shocked to learn that in a large study of 487,375 people living in China, those eating hot peppers almost every day lived 14% longer.  As reported in the British Medical Journal, the cause for this marked mortality reduction was largely due to less heart, cancer, and lung deaths.

As my blog readers are well aware that medical studies are often contradictory, you need to see multiple studies all come to the same conclusion before results can be accepted.  To confirm the results of this large Chinese study, a new study on hot peppers in the U.S. was just published.

In this American red hot chili pepper study, researchers from the University of Vermont Medical College closely followed 16,179 people for 19 years.  Over this 19 year period of time, researchers noted that 4,946 people had passed away.  However, those eating the most hot peppers lived 13% longer.

What was really remarkable about this American study was that those eating the most chili peppers were also the people most likely to smoke, drink, and eat excessive amounts of meat.  Thus, even though their vices would have predicted an early death, somehow the chili peppers may have extended their lives.

7 Reasons Why Chili Peppers Make You Live Longer

How do you explain why studies consistently show that chili peppers are associated with a longer lifespan?  Below are my 7 best reasons why chili peppers make you live longer.

1. Less Inflammation

As I discussed in blog #197, keeping inflammation levels as low as possible was the secret to a recent study showing how you could live to age 110.  The active compound in chili peppers, capsaicin, is a powerful anti-inflammatory agent.

2.