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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
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 29 2019, @05:01PM (4 children)
You can't be very smart to eat a lot of highly spicy (hot) foods to start with. A little spice is great, but when it hurts to put it in your mouth, that is just stupid. When it hurts more to push it out your anus, then you have to be suffering from dementia already to eat more of it. I hear hot, spicy food can be used as a preservative. That's probably the only reason these people live long enough to confuse their condition with dementia.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2, Funny) by NPC-131072 on Monday July 29 2019, @05:09PM (1 child)
To be clear... are you suffering from dementia, tacophobia or homophobia?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday July 29 2019, @10:09PM
Yes. Yes he is.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 29 2019, @05:18PM
Ahhh, that's why you're not in Texas anymore. They kicked you out for being a huge wuss.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 29 2019, @06:29PM
I eat plenty of spicy food. I'm never in pain at either end. Blame your weak genetics.
(Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Monday July 29 2019, @05:19PM
Red. Green. Those little hot flat purple ones. Jalapenos.
Oh, dear. I've eaten those since my later high school years.
Maybe that's linked to why I'm now writing Java code.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 29 2019, @05:20PM (2 children)
Why oh why must supposedly intelligent and educated people make it necessary to pull this one out of the junk drawer so often? Correlation is not causation.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Hartree on Monday July 29 2019, @05:55PM (1 child)
Worse, there's an obvious confounding effect. People who get older and start to lose their sense of smell often start liking spicier foods. Olfactory disfunction is a common first symptom of several kinds of dementia.
This happened to my dad. As he got older he started liking chili so hot I didn't like it. This was a reverse of earlier years where he didn't like my chili as it was too hot. In his late 60s he started developing a non-Alzheimers frontal lobe dementia. (Bad news for me and my brothers. Dad and all of his siblings developed the same mental decline.)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday July 30 2019, @01:57PM
As I get older I am interested in spicy, but LESS spicy than when I was younger. I've come to realize the liking of spicy is not to maximize how hot it is, but that this stuff actually has a taste, that I like.
Because 'less' is better than 'more'?
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 29 2019, @05:20PM (3 children)
and i'm going to be eating my eggs with green habanero sauce in about 10 minutes...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 29 2019, @05:59PM
I just had some habanero jack and sauce. Time to start keeping a journal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @12:19AM (1 child)
You lay eggs too?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @05:50PM
yes and i barf habanero sauce on them and eat my offspring!
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday July 29 2019, @06:44PM (1 child)
Jalapenos are no problem for me. I use Sriracha like Ketchup. When I eat out I and have a choice of spice levels I usually choose the highest, and half the time it's not even spicy for me.
As for why do people keep eating hotter and hotter things? You body develops a tolerance for it. Before I got married Dave's Insanity Sauce was no big deal for me. But a drop of it in a pot of chili made it too hot for my wife to eat.
As for burning coming out, I've never had that problem.
I came. I saw. I forgot why I came.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday July 29 2019, @09:43PM
I like sriracha because it's got heat and flavor without the "FUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCC my mouth, my asssssss"
Just the "Aaahhhhh, nice."
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pTamok on Monday July 29 2019, @07:04PM
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
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.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RamiK on Monday July 29 2019, @07:33PM
Or maybe it's the olfactory receptor neurons failing first as old age and dementia kicks in which leads people to consume far more spices, salty and fatty food to compensate for the loss.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Funny) by SemperOSS on Monday July 29 2019, @11:18PM
I have eaten chiles — chillis — chills — chilies — chilles ... those damn hot things for years and years and have never felt any decline in my menthol — menthal — mintos — mentor ... brain capacitor thingie.
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
Maybe I should add a sarcasm warning now and again?
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday July 30 2019, @01:47AM
Most likely self made china rich are smarter to begin with. Currently, they prefer western diet as a fashion statement. They also have higher BMI and are less physically active exactly like the article describes. They simply follow American life style and so far get away with it. It will change.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.