Doctor's orders: keep it spicy, fun, and a little dirty

Cedars-Sinai and UCLA researchers find that capsaicin, the 'hot' in hot peppers, kills prostate cancer cells:

"Capsaicin had a profound anti-proliferative effect on human prostate cancer cells in culture," said Sören Lehmann, M.D., Ph.D., visiting scientist at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the UCLA School of Medicine. "It also dramatically slowed the development of prostate tumors formed by those human cell lines grown in mouse models."

Lehmann estimated that the dose of pepper extract fed orally to the mice was equivalent to giving 400 milligrams of capsaicin three times a week to a 200 pound man, roughly equivalent to between three and eight fresh habañera peppers

That's a lot of hot pepper in my book, since one raw habañera is nearly enough to make me choke to death. And this really falls into the category of 'shitty press releases about science', glossing through several experiments in a way that's definitely going to get even further muddied by downstream writers.

Still, I'm fascinated by the idea that things like peppers, curry and garlic can have a profound effect on the human body. What's more, the "spicy stuff that's great for you" seems closely related to the "vices that are good for you" category -- caffeine's benefits for asthmatics, and the overall correlation between light drinking and longevity, for example.

And continuing on, there's a whole category of "too-clean living making the human immune system attack the body" research: crohn's disease and IBD appear to be held in check if you have a small population of parasitic worms in your intestine, which suggests an immune system over-response. Not unlike the idea that allergies can result from lack of exposure to germs and dirt as a child.

Or the idea that vitamin D -- particularly in the doses associated being outside -- can cure far more cancers than the sun exposure is likely to cause?

Or the recent reports that parkinson's sufferers fall disproportionately into a personality type of rigid, driven, and straight-laced people? Or the idea that ejaculating 3 times a week is critical for prostate health?

Any one of these ideas may be bullshit, mistated, or a false correlation, but taken as a whole it starts to form an idea that being a little dirty (hygenically and sexually), being in the sun, indulging a little, and embracing the full range of the human experience can be fantastically good for your health.

So forget trying to sterilize your world. Have a drink, get a tan, get laid, and we can talk about addiction some other time...

(link via digg)