Get Easy Health Digest™ in your inbox and don’t miss a thing when you subscribe today. Plus, get the free bonus report, Mother Nature’s Tips, Tricks and Remedies for Cholesterol, Blood Pressure & Blood Sugar as my way of saying welcome to the community!
Three spices for natural pain relief
Red pepper prevents pain?
Chili peppers and especially cayenne pepper have a substance in them called capsaicin. Capsaicin is the part of the pepper that makes it hot and burns the tongue oh-so-nicely in spicy dishes. But it’s also this heat component that is beneficial to pain relief.
When you ingest it, capsaicin works in the body like one of your neurotransmitters, or brain chemicals. It does this by binding with the vanilloid receptor 1 (VR1).
Why does it relieve pain? Well, when a heat increase is felt in the body, VR1 changes its shape and signals nerve cells to feel heat. The brain is actually ‘fooled’ by capsaicin, however.
When you take capsaicin when you have pain, the brain thinks the heat signal from the capsaicin is actually an increased pain signal.
Capsaicin tricks the brain into reducing the pain (heat) signal by depleting the nerves of “substance P.” And when substance P is depleted the nerves can no longer send a pain signal to the brain.
