News: Hot peppers help promote a healthy heart

How hot do you like it? Your food, that is. If you’re a fan of hot and spicy chili peppers, your heart may benefit.

New research suggests that fiery foods such as cayennes, jalapenos, and other chili peppers have the potential to protect against heart disease. The study, reported by ScienceDaily, focused on capsaicin and capsaicinoids, which gives these foods their heat, and found that heart health was benefitted in two ways. For one, these compounds helped lower cholesterol levels, and second, they blocked action of a gene that makes arteries contract and restrict blood flow.

So pile on the chili peppers’in moderation, of course.

How spicy do you like your food?

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