Spicy foods can be good for you
Capsaicin, a chemical that gives spicy food its heat, is being studied for its effects on cancer:
“UK scientists have shown that capsaicin, the chemical that burns your mouth when you eat chillies and an active ingredient of over the counter drugs, can kill cancer cells with little or no harmful side-effects.
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The study that led to this discovery is the first to emerge from a newly formed Nottingham UK-China Collaboration on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NUKCAM). The collaboration has members from the University of Nottingham and the Chinese National Academy of Sciences, for example Professor De-An Guo, who is head of the Shanghai Research Centre for the Modernization of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Prof Guo is working with Dr Bates to discover why traditional Chinese medicines are successful in treating cancer and other diseases.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is considered an alternative medicine in the west. But in China it is an important part of the public health care system.
The last twenty or so years have seen an increasing interest on the part of the West and China to come together and explore this wealth of knowledge that dates back thousands of years. The main thrust of joint projects, like this one, is to examine the theories and uses of TCM using western scientific methods and tools.
Another important milestone in this East-West collaboration will be when The World Health Organization’s (WHO) initiative to to standardize TCM nomenclature reaches conclusion. It is said to be in its final phases, and there is a paper on this by Tony Reid in the The Journal of Chinese Medicine.
As lovers of Sichuan food and dishes will know, chillies do feature prominently in the Chinese diet, and apart from adding fire and flavour are believed by local followers of Chinese medicine to help ward off the ills caused by their damp and muggy climate.”
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