Cayenne pepper is one of the common and main ingredients you could find in spicy foods. It is a type of chili pepper originated from Capsicum family and closely related to the bell and jalapeno peppers. At Southwestern America and Mexico, Ceyene’s hometown, bell and jalapeno peppers—two types of it—become main ingredients for the local cuisines. From this, you could conclude that Southwestern American and Mexico cuisine are usually taste spicy just like what we find at Cajun and Creole dishes.
However, as you may assume, you could not only find ceyene pepper in those mentioned areas. It would be fair to say that at any culture of the world, chili or ceyene pepper is a popular ingredient whether or not the local people like to consume spicy food. This also happens in Indonesia where some areas are very popular of the high consumption and enjoyment of chili and spicy foods such as Padang, Lombok and Java and so do other areas even countries.
In practice, chili or ceyene is usually eaten at raw, pounded in seasoning or ground to make it powder with longer time availability to eat and durability. In modern restaurant, you would likely find ceyene pepper powder than its original shape or mixed at seasoning. This closely relates to the different choice of costumer in which only some of them who like to add spicy taste in their meals. Some others do not like spicy food and even consider it as a source of health problems particularly relating to abdominal and or stomach.
The assumption could be true only for a few cases, because actually, ceyene pepper has a lot of benefits for health. Furthermore, traditional people of its origin, America, also used it for medicine for at least 9000 years. The Chinesse also did so even until today. Instead of causing health problems, ceyene pepper has various advantages to support better work of body organs. This writing would explain about those benefits while clarifying misconception about the harmful essence of ceyene pepper.
Therefore, before enlisting and explaining those benefits, this writing would also enlist some essences contained in ceyene pepper so you could have comprehensive understanding about how it could have various health benefits. The information would also help you to believe more in those benefits so you could consider more to use ceyene pepper in your meal menu or to stimulate your appetite to like consuming spicy foods.
Essences Contained in Ceyene Pepper
Ceyene pepper is not only about the spicy taste or powerful fiery one, but also about various good essences needed by human body to make sure every organ works well and properly. Following is the list of those essences with the information of its ‘number help’ in covering daily need of body for each a tablespoon of Cyene.
• Calories (17)
• Protein (0,6 gram)
• Fat (0,9/1 gram)
• Carbohydrat (3 gram)
• Dietary Fiber (1,4 gram)
• Sugar (0.6/1 gram)
• Vitamin A (44% of daily need)
• Vitamin B 6 (6 % of daily need)
• Vitamin C (7% of daily need)
• Vitamin E (8% of daily need)
• Vitamin K (5% of daily need)
• Manganess (5% of daily need)
• Iron (3% of daily need)
• Potassium (3% of daily need)
• Manganesse (5 % of daily need)
• Calcium (1% of daily need or 7,8 mg)
• Niacin (2% of daily need or 0,5 mg)
• Magnesium (2% of daily need)
• Zinc (1% of daily need)
• Phosporus (2% of daily need)
• Copper (1% of daily need)
• Sodium (0%)
• Chollestrol (0%)
• Flavanoid and Carotenoid (giving the red color)
As you could see, one table spoon of ceyene pepper has very much good essence for your body health. If you do not like spicy food, you do not need to consume it in high volume because a table spoon of ceyene pepper is already helpful in covering your daily need of some essences your body deserves to get it. This would certainly help you to cover the daily need without requiring you to consume a new type of food in your meal menu. Anyway if you are still unsure about how ceyene pepper could help you have a healthier body, pay very much attention to the next section as it would enlist health benefits of ceyene pepper.
Benefits of Ceyene Pepper
Spicy food lovers would likely say that their meal time would not be complete before they eat spicy foods. However for those who do not like spicy foods, eating spicy foods would only damage the meal time because they could not enjoy the meals because being busy in dealing with fiery taste in their tongue. ‘Medium’ lovers of spicy food tend to be wiser saying that having meal with spicy food is good but without it is still ok. Anyway, no matter what categories you are in, following is the list of ceyene peppers health benefits you could consider. Traditional people had been aware of those benefits before and modern people use it as a trace to observe more deeply about these following benefits.
1. Fighting Cold and Flu
It turns out to be effective and well working to consume ceyene pepper or other types of chili when suffering cold and flu. Those two types of health problem are usually caused by congested mucus inside the ‘line’ of head, nose even throat (respiratory passage). Consuming ceyene pepper or spicy foods in the cold and flu period would ‘burn’ your mouth while stimulating mucus to come out from your body and opening your airways. When this sort of blocking block could be expelled from the body, other flu and cold symptoms could be diminished as well.
Particularly on cold symptom, ceyene pepper could also ‘burn’ your body through increasing body temperature and warming it up so the sweat could be emitted. Apart of scientific research, common people know that being sweaty is a sign of recovery from cold and flu. Scientifically, it closely relates to the essences—especially beta carotene and antioxidants in ceyene pepper which could improve body immune system particularly in de-congesting mucus. You may not also ignore the essence of vitamin C which would help in kicking the nasty cold.
2. Boosting Body Metabolism
Body metabolism is one thing you should pay attention to as it would determine your health very much. It serves to ‘manage’ the digestion process of food or other supplies coming into your body, cultivates it, distributes it and then removing the waste. Unfortunately, ensuring the body metabolism works well requires all body organs in the good condition without any threat or problem. On the other side, modern lifestyle or nowadays meal menus sometimes become threat for boosting body metabolism, so that you have to know more about how to make the body metabolism run stable.
One of the things you could do is being selective in choosing your meal style. Consuming ceyene pepper could be one of your solution as it has been found that this spicy foods could surpass the hunger and normalize glucose level. Surpassing the hunger would indirectly lead you to be wiser in making your body organ work. You should remember that what your body organs do is not only cultivating food supply, but also distributing it to all parts of body and arranging the removal process. If you eat too much, your body organs would be so tired that they could not work properly as usual.
Meanwhile, normalizing glucose level would enable your blood pressure in safe condition while lowering LDL cholesterol and triglycerides. It is the blood which distributes oxygen and food supply to your entire body. If it gets any problem relating to the pressure or too much sugar level and cholesterol blocking, it would not work well and possibly cause various types of disease such as diabetes or even worse. Therefore, consuming ceyene pepper could be a preferable and affordable solution for you to make sure your body is still in good condition.
3. Treating Psoriasis
Psoriasis may sound strange but you may often find this kind problem at your surrounding. It is an effect of too quick skin cell replication in the form of swollen patches under the skin with the whitish scales on the top area. The patches look like inflammation and showing excessive skin. In addition to damage the look, this problem also gives itchiness, redness and pain. It is found that Capsaicin—main essence found in ceyene pepper—cream could solve the problem gradually.
4. Preventing Migraine Headache
Migraine headache is common health problems suffering nowadays people. This is closely related to the disturbance on half-head part because of blocking line of blood flow or other causes. If you often suffer this problem, you could consume ceyene pepper at the exact time when the migraine comes. The spicy taste of pepper would stimulate the body to focus in responding a pain in different are. When the focus of pain is split down, the brain would revert its attention from the head to the other side so the migraine would not be too hurting just like before. After the response to the other part, the nerve fibers would have a depleted P substance, or pain chemical, so the pain sensation would be decreased.
If you are still confused in ‘digesting’ this explanation, make a close analogy to your case. You are suffering migraine and then you consume spicy foods using ceyene pepper as the main ingredient. After few first chewing, your focus would turn from the pain in your head to the spicy taste burning your mouth. Realized or not, you would gradually forget the pain your suffer and focus more on the spicy taste on your mouth. This ‘procedure’ would indirectly lessen your pain and heal your migraine in simpler way considering that ceyene pepper also has various benefits to improve body immune system and keep the body condition well.
5. Helping Digestion System
Digestion system is one thing that assure that the food you consume would be cultivated well inside the body and give you energy and other things you need to do daily activities. Without any good digestion system, any food you consume would be useless even harmful for your body and your entire health. Therefore, everyone is supposed to do anything to make sure the digestion system of their body is in good condition.
In this talk, ceyene pepper also helps digestive system works well, particularly by producing so called saliva through stimulating salivary glands to work and produce more and more saliva. You could imagine and remember that when you eat spicy foods, your mouth would produce so much saliva. This saliva is worthies so much in supporting good digestion system as well as preventing any bad breath problem.
In addition to saliva, spicy taste of ceyene pepper also stimulates the enzyme production. Enzyme is another main component to make the digestive smooth. Although the body itself has ability to produce both saliva and enzyme, consuming materials which could stimulate the production is still a good idea because the supply would be much more so the digestion system would be much better as well. For your information, ceyene pepper also stimulates gastric juice serving much and better in support body’s ability to metabolize toxins and foods.
6. Reducing Blood Sugar Level
Blood sugar is a thing you have to always know the recent level of it as it could cause various serious problems. It is hard to control your meal menu to avoid sugar level, because sugar essence could be found almost in common consumed food. Therefore, the best thing you could do is reducing blood sugar through many ways, one of which is consuming ceyene pepper. It is scientifically proved that people with diabetes (high level of blood sugar) who regularly ate the spicy meal need less insulin to decrease the blood sugar level. This means that ceyene pepper is effective in reducing blood sugar even for those who already suffer diabetes.
7. Supporting Detoxification
Most of toxin found in body are from the waste of food or body metabolism process which could not find any exit door. Meanwhile, everyone knows that consuming ceyene peppers would make people sweaty and it means detoxification as it emits the sweat from the body after ‘burning’ it. More importantly, ceyene also stimulates lymphatic system which provides and facilitate removal process.
8. Helping Weight Loss
If you are doing a diet program, consuming ceyene pepper would help you much as it could create less appetite and suppress it so much, even decrease the craving for sweet, salty or fatty foods. This would significantly influence to lessen calorie supply in your daily meal. Moreover, ceyene pepper is also able to burn the excess fat so the support would really help you through various ways.
9. Serving as Anti-Cancer Agent
Some studies found that Capsaicin in ceyene pepper could prevent lung cancer for smokers. Besides reverting the pain through brain focus, Capsaicin is also resistance to cancer.
10. Serving as Anti-Bacterial and Fungus Agent
As dust and dirt is everywhere and inevitable, you could ‘protect’ your food from bacterial threat by using ceyene pepper in its spices. Ceyene pepper servs as an anti-bacterial properties while offering an addictive taste.
Additionally, it also contains anti-fungus properties as found in a study. The study reveals that cayenne pepper could effectively avoid the formation of the fungal phomopsis.
11. Serving as Anti-Irritant and Anti-Allergen Properties
If you suffer some of health problems because of irritation, consuming ceyene pepper would be a great idea. It ranges from ulcer, cough, diarrhea even upset stomach. If common belief says that consuming ceyene pepper is even prohibited when suffering those diseases, recent researches reveal the opposite.
Meanwhile, the status of ceyene pepper as anti-allergy agent is closely related to its anti-inflammatory agent. Therefore, never worry for consuming ceyene pepper because it would not put any allergy on your body, even its symptom.
12. Relieving Pain
Spicy taste of ceyene pepper comes from an essence called Capsaicin. The Capsaicin itself is well known as the good medicine for muscle pain and arthritis. It works well through depleting nerve cells of a chemical called P, which is pain chemical, so it would net send the pain signal to the brain. When this happens, pain would not hurting and disturbing anymore. Studies reveal that for this one function, ceyene pepper is also effective to deal with joint-pain, pain after surgery, amputation, snake bite, toothache, gum diseases, lower back injuries, rheumatism, lumbago, wound and so on.
13. Solving Blood Clots
One small common causes of various serious diseases is about blocking in the blood flow or so called blood clots. When this clot is found, it would significantly block the arteries and blood vessels so the distribution of blood stream would not run smooth. As a consequence, unreachable ‘destination’ of blood stream would not be able to work properly.
However, you do not need to worry because the problem could be solved by doing some very small and simple things; one of which is consuming ceyene pepper. Spicy sensation of ceyene pepper has ability of fibrinolytic activity which is effective in preventing blood clots as well as solving it when the problem already exists. Ceyene pepper could do this through its capsaicin essence.
After paying attention to those benefits, it would be good if you try to consider including ceyene pepper as one of your main spices for cooking your own family meal.