Chilies lower blood pressure?

Lower the blood pressure with hot chillies?

(04.08.2010) Can hypertension be reduced with spicy chili? This question has been investigated by Chinese scientists. Zhiming Zhu from the Third Military Medical University in Chongqing, China, has studied the impact on the blood vessels of capsaicin, a chili-rich healing agent, and published the results of his seven-month long-term study in the journal Cell Metabolism.

On the one hand, Zhu describes the molecular process that leads to lowering blood pressure and also presents the results of his seven-month long-term study, which empirically investigates the relationship between chilli and blood pressure. This shows that capsaicin has clearly contributed to a reduction in blood pressure in experiments on laboratory rats with chronic high blood pressure. The capsaicin added to the feed results in increased nitric oxide release in the rat's metabolism, which relaxes the walls of the blood vessels, expands them and decreases blood pressure. Whether the results can be easily transferred to humans, Zhu is now in subsequent studies to investigate. However, he starts from an equally clear result. A clue already provides him today, the different distribution of the population with high blood pressure in China. In southwestern China, for example, significantly more chilli is consumed than in the north-east, where only 10 to 14 percent of the population has high blood pressure compared to 20 percent in the northeast.

If the results are confirmed, people suffering from high blood pressure may in future be able to do without expensive antihypertensive medication and instead take a good dose of chili. If the traditional chillies are too hot, they also have the option to switch to a milder version that does not contain capsaicin, but an active ingredient that Zhu's scientists believe has a similar blood pressure lowering effect.

In Germany, almost 25% of the population currently suffer from high blood pressure (hypertension), the z. B. can be caused by the impairments of the cardiovascular system, by hormonal problems, metabolic diseases or kidney damage. But even a wrong diet, lack of exercise and stress can be the cause of high blood pressure. This is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, kidney failure or heart attacks. Therefore, hypertension should definitely be medically treated and regularly monitored. If the results of the Third Military Medical University study confirm in the next test in humans, offering an elevated chili consumption sick people a good option, to take the conventional high medicine against the high blood pressure. (Fp)

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Picture: M. Grossmann / pixelio.de