When it comes to doing a cayenne pepper cleanse, the main reason for adding it as an ingredient are the purported weight loss and gastrointestinal benefits. Plus cayenne can really help move that mucus along.
So how does cayenne pepper help weight loss? Well, it’s the heat! Cayenne pepper is considered to be a thermogenic. Thermogenics are certain substances that produce heat and as a result are considered stimulants to the metabolism. Theoretically, boosting your metabolism should increase the rate at which you burn calories. Some advocate that they also help with appetite suppression. So as you can see, the cayenne pepper metabolism benefits are pretty obvious.
There are many thermogenic supplements that you can take if you want to try it out and see if it works for you, but the problem is that many of them contain lots of stimulants which can have a negative impact on health. Often they are loaded with caffeine in various “natural” forms, such as yerba mate and guarana. Or they have ephedrine in them and there are all kinds of warnings about using ephedrine or ephedra, such as high blood pressure and heart palpitations. The FDA has actually banned it.
But cayenne pepper is just a spice and it is something that can be eaten by most people, so if you wanted to give its thermogenic properties a try to see if they help you lose weight, you could easily just try adding some additional heat to your meal. Just remember that you still need to get out and exercise too if you really want to give that metabolism a boost.
Now we come to the other main reason to consider the cayenne pepper health properties, and that’s all about what cayenne can potentially do for your gastrointestinal system. GI problems are often behind a person’s decision for going on a detox cleanse and cayenne pepper may help to heal your digestive system. It can help with the process of elimination and help improve digestion.
Dr. Stanley Burroughs advocated for cayenne pepper for its blood stimulating properties. He felt that this spicy hot pepper was perfect for getting the blood moving and helped with eliminated all of the toxic crap built up in our systems from years of bad diets. All of this stuff could be eliminated in the form of mucus. Since cayenne stimulates mucus production, it can help move things along more quickly and thus make a whole body cleanse much more productive.
Of course, there many be all kinds of other benefits to using cayenne pepper for cleansing as well. Using cayenne may help lower blood pressure if you happen to have high blood pressure. It’s considered a vasodilator. Vasodilation means blood vessel widening. It is the constriction of these vessels that can cause blood pressure to spike and remain elevated.
In addition to these effects, for many folks, cayenne can help with decreasing inflammation in the joints. Cayenne is used in many natural muscle liniments for its healing properties, but it may have some internal benefit for removing inflammation as well, which can help with the joint stiffness and arthritis that many of us get as we get older.
So as you can see, there are many reasons to consider cayenne pepper cleansing. Probably the best way to see if it can benefit you is to just go ahead and try it out.