What are the health benefits of eating black pepper?

Black pepper is a flowering vine in the Piperaceae family grown for its fruit, known as a peppercorn, which is often dried and consumed as a spice and condiment. Peppercorns and the ground pepper obtained from them can be referred to as pepper in general, or as black pepper, green pepper, or white pepper in particular. The following are some of the health benefits of black pepper:

Pepper increases the hydrochloric acid secretion in the stomach, thereby facilitating digestion. Proper digestion is essential to avoid diarrhea, constipation and colic. Pepper also helps prevent intestinal gas formation, and when added to a person’s diet, it can promote sweating and urination, which remove toxins from the body.

Sweating removes toxins and cleans out the pores of any foreign bodies that may have lodged there, and it can also remove excess water or accumulation, also known as oedema. For digestion, inducing digestion can help you lose weight, increase your body’s overall functioning, and prevent various gastrointestinal conditions and colorectal cancer. Its ability to expel gas is because black pepper is a carminative, which forces gas out of the body in a healthy, downward motion, rather than pressing upwards in a dangerous way and straining the upper chest cavity and vital organs. It also inhibits more gas from forming in the body.

The outer layer of peppercorn assists in the breakdown of fat cells. Therefore, peppery foods are an excellent way to help you shed weight naturally. When fat cells are broken down into their parts, they are quickly processed by the body and applied to other, more healthy processes and enzymatic reactions, rather than simply sitting on your body and making you look overweight.

Pepper helps to cure Vitiligo, a skin disease that causes some areas of skin to lose their normal pigmentation and turn white. According to researchers in London, the piperine content of pepper can stimulate the skin to produce pigment. Topical treatment of piperine combined with ultraviolet light therapy is much better than the other harsher, more chemically-based treatments for vitiligo. It also reduces the chances of skin cancer due to excessive ultraviolet radiation.

In Ayurvedic practices, pepper is added to tonics for colds and coughs. Pepper also provides relief from sinusitis and nasal congestion. It has an expectorant property that helps break up the mucus and phlegm depositions in the respiratory tract. Its natural irritant quality allows you to expel this loosened material through the act of sneezing or coughing, which eliminates the material from the body and helps you to heal from whatever infection or illness caused the deposition in the first place.

The antibacterial property of black pepper helps to fight against infections and insect bites. Pepper added to the diet helps keep your arteries clean by acting similarly to fibre and scraping excess cholesterol from the walls, thereby helping to reduce atherosclerosis, the condition highly responsible for heart attacks and strokes.

Pepper is a good treatment for respiratory conditions due to its properties as an expectorant and its potent anti-inflammatory properties.