You must be familiar with cayenne pepper, a hot and spicy ingredient. This product was first introduced in Britain and India back in 1548, and is now an important part in most kitchens. For those who love eating spicy food, especially cayenne pepper, you will be glad to know that more than the taste it gives to your food, cayenne pepper also has health benefits. This is because the herb, which it comes from, the cayenne, has a great healing potency. 

For thousand of years, cayenne has been used to treat certain kinds of illnesses. Also called Capsicum, the name comes from Greek, which means “to bite”, which is basically an allusion to the hot spicy qualities of its fruit and seeds.  It is a shrubby herb of two to six feet high.  Since it has a very pungent taste and aroma, the potent and hot fruit of cayenne has been applied in many areas as a medicine for many centuries. 

Back then, cayenne was used to treat a variety of conditions of gastrointestinal tract, involving the onset of stomachaches, cramping pains, and gas.  Aside from that, cayenne was also applied to treat disorders of the circulatory system.  And in the traditional herbal medicine, cayenne is still used as a circulatory tonic, which is a substance that is believed to enhance the circulation. 

Traditionally, cayenne was usually rubbed on the skin as a cure for rheumatic pains as well as arthritis that are basically caused to what it now termed as “counterirritant effect”.   The counterirritant is that something that roots the onset of irritation to a tissue to which it is used, therefore distracting from the main irritation.  A clear example for this is the joint pain in the case of arthritis. 

All these traditional uses of cayenne have been validated today. Several studies have shown that cayenne indeed has therapeutic benefits. For instance, in the New England Journal of Medicine, three Italian doctors stated how they successfully treated their patient with dyspepsia with cayenne pepper powder. It was also found that cayenne could rebuild the tissue in the stomach, including the peristaltic action in the intestines, thus relieving digestive discomforts, and aiding the body in producing hydrochloric acid, a substance essential for proper digestion as well as assimilation of proteins.

Cayenne is also beneficial for those who have heart disease such as heart attacks.  In fact, some reports have noted that this herb has been known to stop heart attacks within 30 seconds.  That is how great the effects of cayenne that it even encouraged thousands of heart attack patients to take the extract for a much better condition.  It has also a pain-relieving effect that it is used as a treatment for post-herpetic neuropathy or the pain that stays after an attack of shingles.  Along with that, it is also applied for peripheral neuropathy and nerve pain after cancer surgery and arthritis.

Cayenne is now available in health stores near you, either in pill or powdered form. So for those who love spicy foods, there’s something you can look forward to with cayenne. It will not only spice up your food, it will also help you in treating any disorders that you have. That’s killing two birds with one stone.