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Spicy Diet Could be Linked to Dementia

posted by Fnord666 on Monday July 29 2019, @04:58PM   Printer-friendly
from the demented-people-like-spicy-food dept.

martyb writes:

Spicy Diet Could be Linked to Dementia:

A 15-year study of 4582 Chinese adults aged over 55 found evidence of faster cognitive decline in those who consistently ate more than 50 grams of chili a day. Memory decline was even more significant if the chili lovers were slim.

The study, led by Dr Zumin Shi from Qatar University, showed that those who consumed in excess of 50 grams of chili a day had almost double the risk of memory decline and poor cognition.

"Chili consumption was found to be beneficial for body weight and blood pressure in our previous studies. However, in this study, we found adverse effects on cognition among older adults," Dr Zumin says.

[...] Those who ate a lot of chili had a lower income and body mass index (BMI) and were more physically active compared to non-consumers. Researchers say people of normal body weight may be more sensitive to chili intake than overweight people, hence the impact on memory and weight. Education levels may also play a role in cognitive decline and this link requires further research.

Journal Reference:
Zumin Shi, Tahra El-Obeid, Malcolm Riley, Ming Li, Amanda Page, Jianghong Liu. High Chili Intake and Cognitive Function among 4582 Adults: An Open Cohort Study over 15 Years. Nutrients, 2019; 11 (5): 1183 DOI: 10.3390/nu11051183

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by pTamok on Monday July 29 2019, @07:04PM

    by pTamok (3042) on Monday July 29 2019, @07:04PM (#872772)

    What the hell is 50g chili?

    If they had normalised it to mg capsaicin, then the correlation might have had some sense - but this is quoting from their methods

    Derived from dietary surveys, chilli intake included both fresh and dried chilli peppers, but did not include sweet capsicum or black pepper. Cumulative mean chilli intake was calculated for each individual at each survey from all the proceeding years of chilli intake in order to reduce variation within individuals and to represent long term habitual intake [27].

    If the hypothesis is that cognitive decline is caused by something in the chilli, I would have expect some attempt to normalise the chilli measurement. Some people like really, really hot chilli, other like something closer to a bell pepper. As far as I can tell, this is junk research, of the green jelly bean [xkcd.com] variety.
     

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