by Sheryl Walters, citizen journalist

(NaturalNews) Spicy foods add an incredible amount of flavour to food. As ethnic foods become abundant, chilli and spicy food is increasingly popular. The good news is that adding spice to our food has a range of benefits for our health and wellbeing.

Chillies have long been used in traditional medicine, probably first by the Aztecs. In Russia, a drink called Nastoyka (made from chillies soaked in vodka) has also been taken as a healing remedy.

Reduced Cancer Death Rate

Scientists have proven that capsaicin, which is responsible for the burning sensation when we eat chillies, can kill cancer cells, indicating that people could at least prevent the onset of cancer by eating spicy food. This is because it is a natural antioxidant, meaning that it defends against disease causing toxins.

According to the World Health Organization, countries where diets are traditionally high in capsaicin have significantly lower cancer death rates for men and women than in countries where little spicy food is consumed.

Dr Timothy Bates who made the discovery, says that “This is incredibly exciting and may explain why people living in countries like Mexico and India, who traditionally eat a diet which is very spicy, tend to have lower incidences of many cancers that are prevalent in the western world.”

According to Bates, capsaicin attacks the power house of the tumour, thus killing the cancerous tumour cells and reducing tumour growth without harming the surrounding healthy cells. Capsaicin has been found to inhibit the growth of cancer cells in laboratory studies.

Prevents Dangerous Blood Clots

As well as preventing cancer, researchers have also noticed that people who consume large amounts of chilli peppers experienced a lower incidence of thrombo-embolism, or potentially dangerous blood clots.

Scientists have studied the medical records of countries where spicy foods are regularly consumed, and found that people who eat a diet high in chillies experience a much lower incidence of blood clotting diseases. It has now been scientifically proven that capsicum is able to break down blood clots.

Other Benefits of Hot Super Foods Include:

- Chillies are anti inflammatory, so they prevent and relieve arthritis.

- Lower Blood Pressure Naturally- Going hot increases the circulatory system and maintains strong cell walls.

- Chillies are a fantastic remedy for Cluster Headaches and Migraines, and can be put on the temples to sooth the pain. Some researchers are even investigating the effects of snorting it up the nose!

- A mood lifter, depression fighter, and powerful stress reliever. Capsicum increases endorphins and other mood elevating, “feel good” substances.

- Chillies can help protect us from common winter conditions. It may reduce flu symptoms, sinusitis, and respiratory problems. It opens everything up, makes you sweat, and boosts the immune system.

- A powerful remedy for Herpes Simplex flare -ups. You can rub a hot chilli straight on the skin to watch it disappear! Now available in the form of a prescription drug, capsicum ointment is applied to the skin to aid in controlling the pain associated with herpes zoster, also known as shingles.

- A natural muscle relaxant and pain reliever. We all know that putting something hot and spicy on muscular pain offers relief. Again, a hot chilli pepper straight on the skin will do the trick. There are also a number of creams that have capsicum in them to sooth and heal painful muscles.

- Chillies have been shown to have a positive effect on an overactive bladder and on people who have incontinence. It can block contractions that cause unpredictable loss of urine.

- Spicy foods can heal psoriasis and other skin conditions. Topical capsaicin creams have been prescribed to dry up psoriasis patches.

- Studies have shown that ulcers respond well to chillies. Hot peppers inhibit the growth of H. Pylori, the bacteria that causes certain kinds of ulcers.

- Capsicum is good for the skin because it is anti inflammatory and improves circulation.
- Spicy foods improve libido and sex drive.

So if you can handle your food hot, turn up the notch and enjoy the amazing healing benefits and added taste of spicy foods.

Also see:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/62447…

Reprinted from NaturalNews.

Reforming the system will require strong medicine, tough choices

To heal our ailing health care system, we need to stop thinking like Americans. That’s the message of two articles by UCLA’s Dr. Marc Nuwer, a leading expert on national health care reform, published this week in Neurology, the journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

“Americans prize individual choice and resist limiting care,” says Nuwer, a professor of clinical neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “We believe that if doctors can treat very ill patients aggressively and keep every moment of people in the last stages of life under medical care, then they should. We choose to hold these values. Consequently, we choose to have a more expensive system than Europe or Canada.”

Consider these statistics:

• The United States boasts the world’s most expensive health care system, yet only one-sixth of Americans are insured. Medical expenditures exceed $2 trillion annually, making health care the economy’s largest sector, four times bigger than national defense.

• By 2015, the U.S. government is projected to spend $4 trillion on health care, or 20 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.

• An aging population will boost spending. Half of Medicare costs support very sick people in their last stages of life, and experts estimate that Medicare funds will be exhausted by 2018.

• 31 percent of U.S. health care funds go toward administration. “We push a lot of paper,” Nuwer says. “We spend twice as much as Canada, which has a more streamlined health care system that demands doctors complete less paperwork.”

• 10 percent of U.S. expenses are spent on “defensive medicine” – pricey tests ordered by doctors afraid of missing anything, however unlikely. “Doctors don’t want to be accused in court of a delayed diagnosis, so they bend over backwards to find something – even if it’s a rare possibility – in order to cover themselves,” Nuwer says.

Reforming the U.S. health care system with the goal of providing universal, affordable, high-quality care will require rethinking our overall values and paying greater attention to care-related expenditures, according to Nuwer.

Part of the current problem, he says, is that doctors are oblivious to the price tags of options they’re prescribing for patients. He recommends educating physicians about the costs of care, including imaging, blood tests and specific drugs.

“Does a fancy electric wheelchair cost $500 or $50,000?” Nuwer asks. “Most doctors have no clue. We need to give physicians feedback about the dollar signs behind their orders.”

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Nuwer’s co-authors on both articles include Dr. G.L. Barkley (Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit); Dr. G.J. Esper (Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta); Dr. P.D. Donofrio (Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville); Dr. J.P. Szaflarski (University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center); and Dr. T.R. Swift (Medical College of Georgia, Augusta).

UCLA is California’s largest university, with an enrollment of nearly 38,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university’s 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer more than 323 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Four alumni and five faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize. For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom.

Reprinted from the UCLA Newsroom.