Peppers (Hot)

The quest for heat has gotten many injured along the way. Too much concentration of an extremely hot variety of pepper can hurt partakers. Many have even died from food games and challenges related to highly concentrated hot pepper sauce. People have been known to swallow too much of a particularly hot brew and later succumb to organ failure and internal blood vessel injury. The pancreas and the liver can shut down when hot pepper heat is at a biologically dangerous level. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can have our hot peppers, enjoy them, benefit from them, have fun in the process, and not hurt ourselves. Hot peppers are adored by many, in some ways to a fault. Not all hot peppers are for everyone. Everybody is different. Some are more sensitive than others. Once you learn about the different varieties of hot peppers, and the different heat levels, you can become accustomed to certain peppers and acclimate to a point where you can enjoy and use the ones that you know and love best. Different peppers have different ranges of heat. Cayenne, for example, heats the mouth and throat. Jalapeños heat the stomach. Ripe hot peppers (usually red, orange, or yellow) carry a certain variety of vitamin C. The vitamin C from hot peppers is a strong, resilient antioxidant that stimulates immune cell activity, waking up immune cells and getting the cells to seek out toxins and poisons and even pathogens. This brings us to the next understanding: Pathogens hate capsaicin— viruses and bad bacteria do not like capsaicin. And they do not like to be heated by this phytochemical compound. Capsaicin is a direct irritant to pathogens and can even cause death to pathogens. Pathogens that live in the mouth, throat, stomach, or small intestine get injured the most by capsaicin. Pathogens that live deep in the liver and other organs get less affected, because these organs protect and buffer these viruses and bad bacteria. This doesn’t mean you should step up the heat and try to flush your body with large amounts of hot pepper to try to kill pathogens. If you put that level of heat in large concentrations inside the body, that could get injurious to organs. In the end, you’ll make yourself sick and still have pathogens. Hot peppers have another powerful medicinal attribute, and that’s mucus movement, the purging and stimulating of mucus membranes to help move and shift congestion. Hot peppers’ phytochemical compounds plus capsaicin cause a flushing action, blood vessel expansion, and stimulation and movement of the lymphatic system, creating a purge. This process causes the nose to run and sinuses to drain, and allows the purge to help move toxins toward areas such as the kidneys, where they can be excreted through urination. This purge opens up the possibility to make new room for the liver by flushing a backed-up lymphatic system so that a liver filled with old storage bins of toxins can release some of those toxins, allowing a new cycle of cleansing and detoxification to occur. Livers that are already hot from being overburdened and overworked can get stimulated by capsaicin, allowing the heat in the liver to shift and a stagnant liver to awaken. Often the people who love hot peppers the most are people with stagnant, sluggish, fatty, hot livers. Innately, they’re trying to treat their liver with hot peppers.