Behold: the Power of Cayenne!

Joshua and I have done a lot of digging to find foods and spices/herbs with "superpowers" - that is, ones that do or may contain anti-cancer properties. One of the spices we've increased our use of is cayenne. - Muy caliente!

"In 2010 researchers from the UCLA School of Medicine studied breast cancer cells and found that capsaicin not only retarded their growth and arrested their ability to travel, but also increased the degree of apoptosis."

-Read more about Cayenne Pepper, Cancer & Tumors in this article on Livestrong's website.

Here are some other interesting links about cayenne pepper:

• University of Maryland Medical Center - uses include: pain relief, psoriasis, weight loss, and other uses
• Web MD - uses and effectiveness for a variety of symptoms
• Livestrong - cayenne pepper health effects, benefits (along w/side effects & interactions), benefits of cayenne pepper pills  
• Health Freedom Resources - a link to their cayenne concentrate dropper bottle, which also has information about cayenne pepper + its uses
• Wikipedia article - all about cayenne peppers

You CAN just use plain ol' cayenne pepper.
- or -
If you're a spice aficionado, try this product!
Joshua puts 1-2 drops on nearly everything
except ice cream!
It boasts "100 times hotter than jalapenos" and
"Scoville rating: 500,000" on the bottle.
It even ate through one medicine dropper top.
YIKES!

Joshua has trained his system to tolerate more peppers and hot, spicy stuff than I can handle, so he usually adds and extra dose to his servings. See the picture to the right for how he doses his food with extra capsaicin.

We do not think cayenne (nor capsaicin, the ingredient in cayenne that makes it hot) is a cancer 'treatment.' Yet we are aware that capsaicin demonstrates the ability to inhibit the growth of cancer cells; research suggests that the compound promotes apoptosis -- the death of cancer cells. 

We don't have any contraindications to using it, so why not give it a try? 

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For the people that like to know more about everything, here's an informative article about the Scoville scale - used to measure the pungency of chili peppers!