Peppers (Capsicum sp.) for Weight loss: Myth or truth?

When you google “Capsicum medicinal properties”, you will find around 267,000 links (37,000 if you do it in Spanish), that will inform you that Capsicum can cure your migraines, makes you lose weight and helps you find a boyfriend or a girlfriend. We are exaggerating with the boy-girlfriend thing but we take the opportunity to tell you that you have to analyze and discuss all the information that you find in the internet. It can be worse if it comes from a networking-social media. Last week for example, a friend of ours posted that the Annona fruit cures cancer (not proved) and another friend posted that caffeine makes you smarter (it makes you more alert but does not make you smarter). Most of these links tend to exaggerate certain facts.  By the way, my neighbor drinks like 10 cups of coffee a day and he is not the brightest person we know (he could be the exception though).  Anyway, in this blog we would like to provide some information based on scientific publications, self-experimentation and mainly we would like you to search more information if you have unanswered questions, doubts and you can draw your own conclusions. The beauty of science comes from the fact that you can discuss it, refute it and explore it as much as you want.

Just a little tiny sample of the Peruvian biodiversity of fruits. You will see the Annona fruit (green fruit, two species) , the Andean Passion fruit (tumbo de sierra), the coastal passion fruit (maracuya) and Papaya from Arequipa (Vasconcellea cundinamarcensis V.M. Badillo).

Several people would love to lose weight (and look like a model) by swallowing a miracle pill. If you want to look like a model, you have to exercise and follow a really strict diet (lettuce and cabbage? Or air?). Genetics can help a big deal too, if you are the daughter or son of Cindy Crawford you have the genes!!! But, if you want to lose weight like a normal person, to feel healthy and for your own good, you have to start a healthy diet, exercise. Be careful with diet pills or food replacements, use them after talking to your doctor or nutritionist  These supplements do not make miracles, so do not trust the miracle pill. Anyway, in our research we found several useful facts about Capsicum. It seems that Capsicum can be used for weight loss, and we found enough scientific support (101 peer-reviewed publications). Some studies suggest that capsaicinoids (see the post from the other week) could accelerate the metabolism and burn some extra calories in the long run (Galgani, Ryan, & Ravussin, 2010). Stop here, do not get excited, please remember the phrase “in the long run”. So, if you eat your fried chicken with lots of mayonnaise, and French fries, do not expect to burn calories by eating peppers later that day.

Let’s go back to the scientific publications, it seems that capsaicinoids increase the energy consumption by activating the brown adipose tissue (Yoneshiro, Aita, Kawai, Iwanaga, & Saito, 2012). What is the brown adipose tissue? Well think about the fat tissue that converts the food into heat (therefore we can be warm) (Cannon & Nedergaard, 2004). In theory, if you eat Capsicum and get naked in the middle of the winter in Chicago, you can definitely loose some pounds of this tissue (do not do it, it is not worth). But what about the white adipose tissue, the one that isolates us from the cold and supports our internal organs (your normal fat). Well, in an experiment dealing with obesity in rats, it was observed that these lovely peppers accelerated the metabolisms of lipids (that later will constitute part of the White adipose tissue) and it was recorded that some rats lost 8% of their corporal weight (they did slim down) (Joo, Kim, Choi, & Yun, 2010). Now, we go for the best part, Capsicum reduces the production of ghrelin (a hormonal peptide), that is involved in the “hunger sensation” (Smeets & Westerterp-Plantenga, 2009). Furthermore, if the food is really hot (spicy) you will eat slowly, cry a lot and drink lots of water, therefore less food in your stomach!!!

Web Md (the famous website that is not good for hypochondriacs but it saved us from several trips to the doctor’s office) posted that Capsicum helps lower cholesterol levels, and prevents coronary diseases, but more studies are needed (we added the last part). It is worth to mention that a diet containing Capsicum will slightly increase the good cholesterol (HDL-cholesterol) and it will increase the blood flow in men (did not mention women) (Ahuja, Robertson, Geraghty, & Ball, 2007).

Now let’s go to your back pains, rheumatism, arthritis, migraines, sinus infections, nasal congestion. Try with capsaicin cream and rub it in the affect area. You may feel a burning sensation but it does relieve the pain (we tried this one, it worked).

Beware of the Capsicum in the hands of your kid or yourself. We found a report that Capsicum may lead to conjunctive tissue infection in kids (Gerber, Frueh, & Tappeiner, 2011) so be careful when chopping peppers (use gloves).

Cutting "Aji escabeche" to make "Aji de gallina" (spicy chicken). 

If you want more information about the Capsicum, medicinal properties, taxonomy, distribution, etc., do not hesitate to write us. We list some for the publications we consulted for this post (there are many more but we got lazy in listing them). Eat and use Capsicum if you feel comfortable with the hot element. Each person and body is different and we have to learn to listen to our body, Capsicum could improve your diet results but do not use it as unique way to lose weight. To finish this post we will leave you with the picture of a Peruvian jungle pepper (known as Aji Charapita). Enjoy. In the next post we will teach you how to prepare pesticides with Capsicum and other plants.  

Note: If you search for Capsaicinoids and metabolism in Web of Science you can find at least 125 publications, compare that with the search in google (267,000). You can reach your own conclusions.

Cited Literature

Ahuja, K. D. K., Robertson, I. K., Geraghty, D. P., & Ball, M. J. (2007). The effect of 4-week chilli supplementation on metabolic and arterial function in humans. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 61(3), 326-333. doi: 10.1038/sj.ejcn.1602517

Cannon, Barbara, & Nedergaard, Jan. (2004). Brown Adipose Tissue: Function and Physiological Significance. Physiological Review, 84, 277–359.

Galgani, J. E., Ryan, D. H., & Ravussin, E. (2010). Effect of capsinoids on energy metabolism in human subjects. British Journal of Nutrition, 103(1), 38-42. doi: 10.1017/s0007114509991358

Gerber, S., Frueh, B. E., & Tappeiner, C. (2011). Conjunctival Proliferation After a Mild Pepper Spray Injury in a Young Child. Cornea, 30(9), 1042-1044. doi: 10.1097/ICO.0b013e318206cad9

Joo, Jeong In, Kim, Dong Hyun, Choi, Jung-Won, & Yun, Jong Won. (2010). Proteomic Analysis for Antiobesity Potential of Capsaicin on White Adipose Tissue in Rats Fed with a High Fat Diet. Journal of Proteome Research, 9(6), 2977–2987.

Smeets, A. J., & Westerterp-Plantenga, M. S. (2009). The acute effects of a lunch containing capsaicin on energy and substrate utilisation, hormones, and satiety. European Journal of Nutrition, 48(4), 229-234. doi: 10.1007/s00394-009-0006-1

Yoneshiro, T., Aita, S., Kawai, Y., Iwanaga, T., & Saito, M. (2012). Nonpungent capsaicin analogs (capsinoids) increase energy expenditure through the activation of brown adipose tissue in humans. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 95(4), 845-850. doi: 10.3945/ajcn.111.018606

Loving Capsicum and the truth behind its medicinal propoerties

Many of you believed that Romeo loved Juliet? big mistake!!! The real story (never told of course) is that Romeo could not live without eating peppers. He loved his peppers (kind of sick, but that was Romeo, not us). Romeo found out that Juliet’s family owned 20 hectares of peppers, so when he met her, all he could see was a great display of ceviches, stuffed peppers, tiraditos, and different salsas. When he found out that Juliet did not own a single pepper (not even pickled peppers), he went insane and stop eating his peppers, his stomach became susceptible to Helicobacter pylori, Scherichia coli, Salmonella (yes, all the cocktail of bad bacteria) and he died from stomach complications (way too many, he had massive diarrhea). Juliet, who was a little bit stupid (big time), wanted to kiss Romeo for the last time and the Helicobacter and all his bacteria and fungi located in his mouth and saliva (at this point more water and no defensive traits) were transmitted to her (an unusual medical case, reported only here). She died within hours since she was anorexic-bulimic and had no defenses in her body. She needed to eat quinoa, with pepper sauce and cheese to get strong and meaty, but that was too late. Shakespeare wrote kind of a similar version but we like facts and poetry is not our deal (although you have to give us credit for our imagination).

Photo 1: Lovely drawing of Romeo and Juliet done by a 4 year old kid (not really but none of us wants to take credit for this image)

All Capsicum species have interesting medicinal properties. We can go crazy and give you all the scientific information that we found but instead of boring you with all the literature, we will give you some information about few of its medicinal properties, and by the way, you can even fumigate your plants with peppers to repel insect attacks.

First at all, we will provide you with some information that can be used as a conversation starter, you can even impress people. “Did you know that there are more than 40 recognized species of peppers? Can you imagine the variety of food that you can make?" If you receive for an answer “I do not like peppers”, then move to the next person!!

Anyway, according to The Plant List, http://www.theplantlist.org/tpl/search?q=capsicum and TROPICOS (http://www.tropicos.org/) there are 44 species de Capsicum with solved taxonomy (meaning accepted names). You will see in these lists like 270 species, but several of them are synonyms or varieties. For now, we will not bore you with taxonomic details (another time if you wish, we can even show phylogenies, center of origin, domestication and really cool stuff).

Photo 2: Some varieties of Capsicum sp.

Now we go to the chemistry of it, all Capsicum species have to chemical compounds called: Capsaicine y Dehydrocapsaicine. Sounds like another language (Garifune? which is the coolest language ever) and its molecule looks like a broken fragment of a chicken wire. Those are only cool sounding names, do not get scared, but those capsaicinoids are the ones producing the “hot sensation”, and when there are more capsaicinoids more is the hotness of the peppers. The hottest one is called Bhut Jolokia (Capsicum chinensi/Capsicum frutescens,). This one is capable of sending us to the moon (of pain), it is 18 times hotter than the jalapeno and 343 times hotter that the sweat pepper (Liu & Nair, 2010).

Photo 3: Here is the picture depicting the “hotness index”, you can see that Bhut Jolokia is the hottest one. The picture was extracted from the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120191360681137059.html. We explain this since we are trying to avoid lawsuits for “inappropriate use” of the picture and then the journal will take away our guinea pigs called Britney Spears and Justin Bieber (those pets are our only material asset).

According to Web MD (medical website that should be avoided if you are a hypochondriac), peppers can be used to aid digestion, stomach pain, diarrhea. According to the scientific material that we gather for this little blog it seems that most of the studies (we are only quoting some of them) point out that Capsicum spp. have anti-inflammatory properties (Lopez, Gorzalczany, Acevedo, Alonso, & Ferraro, 2012; Zimmer et al., 2012), but when there is already an inflammation in the stomach, the consumption of Capsicum could make things worse (Salam, Szolcsanyi, & Mozsik, 1997). We deduct from this information that Capsicum is used more as a preventive food, meaning, that if you are healthy, eat as many peppers as you want. The peppers will act as a “stomach vaccine” (that is not the word that we want to use, but hey, we are really struggling with the English here) and it will prevent stomach diseases and it is an anti-inflammatory agent (it is proved in chickens and rats).

Another important fact is that Capsicum is an excellent biocide, against Salmonella spp., Escherichia coli (Molina-Torres, Garcia-Chavez, & Ramirez-Chavez, 1999; Soetarno & E., 1997) and other stomach parasites. Beat the pathogens with peppers!!!! We think that if the person is used to eat Caspicum the probabilities of getting travelers’ diarrhea is very low, compared to a person that does not eat spicy food. Now, if you have already typhoid fever and then you decide to eat as many peppers as you can, we are afraid is not going to work, you could make things worse (but we have not tried it yet).  Also, we have the duty to inform you that we found a study that reports that Capsicum could increase the risk of developing stomach cancer (Lopezcarrillo, Avila, & Dubrow, 1994). The same study suggests that more research is needed and we did not find too many studies like this one (actually none, but we need to search more).

Anyway, as a separate note, we have some oral reports (from 6 Peruvians and 2 Bolivians) that claim that they were diagnosed in the hospital with stomach ulcers caused by Helicobacter pylori, and they claim that they treated it with Capsicum pubescens (rocoto in Peru, locoto in Bolivia). We do not have the chemical profile for this species in particular but we think something is out there. Maybe there is some compounds in this specific specie that could be effective against Helicobacter pylori, maybe something more complex is going on (and we love that!!!)

As you can see, peppers can be used to enforce your digestive system but it could be risky. We need to add that every human being has a different intestinal flora and this is another reason of why our stomach will not work as your stomach. Study your own body before you take this information for granted. What is good for Paquito, can be poison for Lolita. For now we have to interrupt this blog so we can cook a peanut-cheese-pepper-sauce (ocopa), but in our next blog we will report the truth behind the claim: “Lose weight eating peppers.” Until next time.

Photo 4: Capsicum pubescens

Cited Literature

Liu, Y. B., and M. G. Nair. "Capsaicinoids in the Hottest Pepper Bhut Jolokia and Its Antioxidant and Antiinflammatory Activities." Natural Product Communications 5, no. 1 (Jan 2010): 91-94.

Lopez, P., S. Gorzalczany, C. Acevedo, R. Alonso, and G. Ferraro. "Chemical Study and Anti-Inflammatory Activity of Capsicum Chacoense and C-Baccatum." Revista Brasileira De Farmacognosia-Brazilian Journal of Pharmacognosy 22, no. 2 (Mar-Apr 2012): 455-58.

Lopezcarrillo, L., M. H. Avila, and R. Dubrow. "Chili-Pepper Consumption and Gastric-Cancer in Mexico - a Case-Control Study." American Journal of Epidemiology 139, no. 3 (Feb 1994): 263-71.

Molina-Torres, J., A. Garcia-Chavez, and E. Ramirez-Chavez. "Antimicrobial Properties of Alkamides Present in Flavouring Plants Traditionally Used in Mesoamerica: Affinin and Capsaicin." Journal of Ethnopharmacology 64, no. 3 (Mar 1999): 241-48.

Salam, O. A., J. Szolcsanyi, and G. Mozsik. "The Indomethacin-Induced Gastric Mucosal Damage in Rats. Effect of Gastric Acid, Acid Inhibition, Capsaicin-Type Agents and Prostacyclin." Journal of Physiology-Paris 91, no. 1 (Feb 1997): 7-19.

Soetarno, S., and Sukrasno E. "Antimicrobial Activities of the Ethanol Extracts of Capsicum Fruits with Different Levels of Pungency." JMS 2, no. 2 (1997): 57-63.

Zimmer, Aline Rigon, Bianca Leonardi, Diogo Miron, Elfrides Schapoval, Jarbas Rodrigues de Oliveira, and Grace Gosmann. "Antioxidant and Anti-Inflammatory Properties of Capsicum Baccatum: From Traditional Use to Scientific Approach." Journal of Ethnopharmacology 139, no. 1 (Jan 6 2012): 228-33.