Social media users concerned about sudden heart failure might have seen videos and other viral content offering an unusual treatment method: cayenne pepper. A posted last month purports that cayenne pepper can stop a heart attack. This is false. There is no research or proven medical advice suggesting consuming the spice can stop a heart attack.
Whether it's dubious claims about the side effects of COVID-19 vaccines or lists of symptoms on WebMD that have you second-guessing a tension headache, the internet is full of untested health advice – and heart conditions are the latest ailment to garner attention.
The TikTok video, which features a clip from a 2016 lecture by Australian naturopath Barbara O'Neill, was also shared by users who say they're from Canada on Twitter and . They and others have urged people with cardiovascular issues or needing to thin their blood to start taking cayenne pepper regularly.
Rating: False
O'Neill was by the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission in 2019 over false claims that cancer was a fungus that could be cured with bicarbonate soda.
In the , O'Neill recounts how she was once called to tend to a half-conscious woman experiencing a heart attack during a cooking class at a health retreat in Melbourne.
O'Neill claims the patient was pale and her pulse was nearly gone, so she served the woman half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper with a glass of water. O'Neill alleges the pepper got into the woman's blood vessels and thinned the blood, helping her pulse rebound within two minutes and allowing her to sit up and speak.
Matters of the heart
"That's just not true," Dr. Glen Pyle said about O'Neill's cayenne pepper claims.
The member of the IMPART Investigator Network at Dalhousie Medicine and a molecular cardiology researcher at the University of Guelph said it takes far longer than two minutes for cayenne pepper to make it to someone's blood stream and there are no credible studies showing it thins blood.
"Giving somebody cayenne pepper when they're having a heart attack does not work. Period. Full-stop," Pyle said.
Peppered with studies
Several studies have found some correlation between cardiovascular health and cayenne and chili peppers, but none have concluded the spices can stop heart attacks.
In published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the chili pepper intake and cardiovascular health of 22,811 people from Molise, Italy, were studied for about eight years.
The study found regular consumption of chili peppers was associated with by cardiovascular disease. Chili pepper eaters were also less likely to have died of cerebrovascular disease such as strokes.
Act fast
Frequent signs of a heart attack include chest discomfort such as pressure, squeezing, burning or heaviness, as well as sweating, nausea, shortness of breath, light-headedness and upper body discomfort in the neck, jaw, shoulder, arms and back. Women are more likely to have upper body discomfort than chest pain, Pyle said.
Rather than turn to cayenne pepper, the Heart and Stroke Foundation experiencing these signs call 911 or their local emergency number immediately.
Then, the foundation tells people to stop all activity and sit or lie down in a comfortable position.
If you take nitroglycerine, which opens the blood vessels and is typically prescribed to patients with angina to use during attacks, take your normal dosage, the foundation says.
It also recommends chewing and swallowing either one 325 mg tablet or two 81 mg tablets of acetylsalicylic acid, also known as Aspirin, if you are not allergic or intolerant. Aspirin can help stop the blood clot causing the heart attack from getting any bigger, the foundation says.
Sources
(topic of cayenne pepper starts at 1:26:00) ()
Claim appears on TikTok (, ) and Twitter () and ()
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- This article was updated on March 6, 2023, to correct a typo
