Eating Chili Peppers Slashes Heart Attack Death Risk

Good News Notes:

Your heart is one of the most vital organs in your body, but keeping this muscle healthy isn’t always easy. Due to risk factors like high blood pressure, physical inactivity, and excessive alcohol use, someone in the U.S. has a heart attack every 40 seconds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Nearly 30 percent of these people end up dying, with about 50 percent of the deaths occurring before they can even get to the hospital, per Medscape. But even if you do have a heart attack, there is one type of food that could slash your risk of dying from it by nearly half. Read on to find out which heart healthy food you may want to add to your diet.

Eating chili peppers four times a week lowers your risk of dying from a heart attack.

A 2019 Italian study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology analyzed the impact of chili peppers on the risk of death from a heart attack. The researchers used data from more than 22,800 participants enrolled in the Moli-sani study, a population cohort that recruited men and women at random between March 2005 and April 2015. For the 2019 study, the participants’ health status was followed for about eight years and compared with their eating habits. The Italian researchers found that those who were regularly consuming chili peppers at least four times a week or more had a 40 percent lower risk of dying from a heart attack than those who rarely ate this food.

The researchers didn’t stop at looking for health benefits in relation to heart attacks. According to the study, people who ate chili peppers four times a week or more were also 60 percent less likely to die from cerebrovascular disease such as stroke compared to those who did not regularly eat these peppers.

The researchers did not examine exactly why chili peppers could potentially have a positive impact on heart health, but certain experts believe that capsaicin, the active ingredient that gives chilis their fiery heat, might be the reason. “Some data show how capsaicinoids [a class of compounds that includes capsaicin] may have an impact on platelet function [to help your body form clots to stop bleeding], the cells lining the blood vessels, and reduction in insulin resistance,” Jeffrey Teuteberg, MD, a cardiologist at Stanford Health Care, who was not involved in the study, told Everyday Health.

You may not have to change your entire diet either. Eating chili peppers at least four times a week can have a risk-reducing impact for you, even if you don’t follow a typical “healthy diet,” according to the study. “An interesting fact is that protection from mortality risk was independent of the type of diet people followed,” lead study author Marialaura Bonaccio, PhD, an epidemiologist at the Mediterranean Neurological Institute, said in a statement.

She added, “In other words, someone can follow the healthy Mediterranean diet, someone else can eat less healthily, but for all of them chili pepper has a protective effect.”…’

View the whole story here: https://bestlifeonline.com/chili-peppers-heart-attack-news/

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