JALAPENOS, TABASCO SAUCE, AND A SIDE ORDER OF ULCERS?

WRITER: FRED HILTON // PHOTO ILLUSTRATOR: ANTHONY CASTO

Ilike hot, spicy food — Indian, Mexican, Chinese, Tex-Mex, whatever. However, I do not go overboard. On the macho scale of gobbling down fiery foods, I am an absolute wimp compared to a friend of mine. He always orders the hottest thing on the menu and polishes off jalapenos like they are Tic Tacs. When he eats out, he brings a bottle of Tabasco sauce with him in case the restaurant doesn’t have any. He dumps Tabasco onto everything. When no one is looking, I’m sure he puts it on his ice cream.

My friend does not have an ulcer. Until recently, conventional wisdom was that his eating habits are sending him on the fast track to an ulcer. Today, however, it has been pretty firmly established that hot and spicy foods do not cause ulcers.

Two Australian scientists, Dr. Robin Warren and Dr. Barry Marshall, even won the 2005 Nobel Prize for medicine by showing that bacteria — not eating habits — cause ulcers.

Their research showed that the vast majority of ulcers are caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori. Thanks to the work of Drs. Warren and Marshall, most ulcers can be cured with a shortterm course of drugs and antibiotics. The bacterium causes more than ninety percent of duodenal (intestinal) ulcers and up to eighty percent of gastric (stomach) ulcers.

An article on Medicine.org agrees that spicy foods don’t cause ulcers. They say, if you have an existing ulcer, it can irritate them and this could be how the old wives’ tale concerning spicy foods causing ulcers was born. all ulcers are caused r those who love hot food, evidence e y preven e tive effect rs. chers h does not have a ncy

While nearly all ulcers are caused by H. pylori, as it is commonly known, there are some other causes. Among them are certain medications and some illnesses, such as cancer or Crohn’s disease.

Happily, for those who love hot food, there is some evidence that spicy food could actually have a preventive effect against ulcers. Everyday Health reports that “researchers in Singapore found that people who ate mostly Chinese food, which does not have a high amount of capsaicin, had three times the frequency of ulcers as those who mostly ate the much spicier Malay or Indian food. Researchers believe that capsaicin stimulates nerve endings in the stomach that cause the release of protective chemicals. They also think that capsaicin changes the acid balance in the stomach to one in which the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, the primary cause of an ulcer, cannot live.”

So enjoy your Tabasco sauce. It’s especially good on strawberry ice cream.

FRED HILTON spent thirty-six years as the chief public relations officer/spokesman for James Madison University in Virginia and ten years prior as a reporter and editor for The Roanoke Times in Roanoke, Virginia. He is now happily retired in The Villages with his interior designer wife, Leta, their Cadillac Escalade golf cart, and their dog, Paris. (Yes, that makes her Paris Hilton).